


dreams don't plague the dead

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, The Fabulous Killjoys (Danger Days) Are Not MCR
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24171109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Fun Ghoul is a killjoy with a penchant for explosive detonations and duel-wielded ray guns; a menace to Better Living Industries and a patron saint to the Undergrads seeing Zone life for the first time.That is, untilFun Ghouldisappears, andDante Uraganogets an offer that can change his life; will change his life, because he couldn't say no if he wanted to.From there, it's all a matter of who he meets and how he meets them, isn't it? From the straight-faced Crow student who didn't follow instructions as closely as he should've, a lie on his tongue whenever they met, to the unsuspecting high school kid with a rebel jacket hidden in his duffel bag.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 25





	1. everybody hide your body from the scarecrow...

**Author's Note:**

> DANTE URAGANO - Fun Ghoul  
> MARCO CAMPBELL - Kobra Kid  
> STEF CAMPBELL - Party Poison  
> GABRIEL HARPER - Jet Star  
> CLARE ANDERSON - NewsAGoGo

#  _ Chapter One _

The world was a monochrome illusion of a dream Dante could never remember, one that brought the world to life in its color and disappeared just as soon.

Or maybe the world outside his window was the dream, something designed and created to fit an imperfect reflection lacking in the color.

Dante sighed, a puff of air floating up when he exhaled. They must not have paid the heating bill yet; it was the first of the month, after all. The repetitive dreams, the ones he never remembered, got old quickly when you couldn’t grasp a thing you were seeing, when you could only barely remember what unsettled you.

It was a bit like looking out a window with a pane of glass so clear you couldn’t tell if it was open, and testing your theory meant leaning over a thirty-story building; it wasn’t the most appealing option, was it?

Especially not when Dante woke up, no; the headache he got nearly every morning was starting to form, and laying in bed wasn’t something Dante liked to do for longer than he had to. Staring at the ceiling made him uncomfortable. 

Alright, the same routine as every morning.

Wake up, wonder about his dream, get out of bed, take a shower, take his morning pills, eat breakfast, leave for school. And don’t forget his laptop, because if he does that again the security officer is going to have  _ words with him _ if his advisor was to be trusted.

Whatever. The same thing.  _ Just remember,  _ Dante thought, a bitter taste in his mouth that wasn’t from the toothpaste he was about to put in his mouth,  _ the aftermath is secondary _ .

He liked to remind himself every morning because it felt  _ fake  _ in the mornings, so unlike the rest of the day, and if anything, it perplexed Dante.

_ The aftermath is secondary. _

_ The future is bulletproof. _

_ Keep smiling _ .

Dante would keep smiling, keep believing in a bulletproof future, let others worry about the aftermath, but it felt wrong in the mornings in a way that his hands ached when he woke up like they were rejecting his body.

Oh, the world was not a world Dante belonged in.

But he only really thought that until he took his meds, but the shower helped his headache more than the meds did. He was thinking about talking to his doctor about getting it adjusted because his headaches were getting worse and he was waking up too much in the middle of the night.

“Dante, dear, are you ready for school?”

Dante’s mother always called his name at the same time, every morning, with the same phrase, the same tone, and more than anything, Dante appreciated she loved him enough to call him  _ dear _ . She never called his father dear.

Without a word, Dante slung his backpack over his shoulder, already forgetting everything he’d done in the morning beyond slinging his backpack over his shoulder and swallowing his meds.

The headache was gone, and his hands weren’t aching anymore.  _ Finally _ .

“Don’t be late to school,” she smiled; her smile unnerved Dante, though he could never figure out why. She’d been wearing the same smile his entire life, right?

_ Right? _

“Of course, Mother,” Dante smiled right back, the expression falling perfectly naturally onto his face, though part of Dante was wondering what felt so off about it.

Yeah, he needed to talk to his doctor. He was starting to miss chunks of his day from… what was all but a black-out, and the world became nothing more than a pixelated child’s painting every time he started to think about it.

With that, Dante took a breakfast bar from off the counter and found his way out the front door, on the same walk he traveled every morning to get to school. Four blocks, one turn, and that took him to the gates of the school rather than to his first class.

Dante always zoned out during the walk. It was boring, and there was nothing interesting to do other than listen to the morning broadcasts through his headphones, and headphones made his ears hurt. 

Sound wasn’t designed to be someone heard by you and you alone if you asked Dante. It should be all around you.

And yet, as he fell into line with the group of kids that walked to school the same way as him, at the same time as him, even their footsteps were silent, everyone’s headphones on to listen to the broadcast.

They were just doing as they were supposed to. Dante wondered if, later, not to his doctor but to his therapist, he could mention that he thought maybe he could opt out of the morning broadcasts to listen to the sounds of the city.

While his mother gave him a look he couldn’t identify whenever he brought up sound of any sort, Dante was dead set on the idea that sound was something to recognize your life by; what is his home, this city, if not a collection of sound? What is the city if not a connection between lives, all by sound - their voice, their laugh, the way their footsteps echo down a corridor, their nervous habits?

Whatever. Maybe it was just wishful thinking he’d never be rid of. He needed to start actually listening to his headphones because the silence in which his walking group held was starting to get to his head.

“We’re going to be right on time,” Dante said cheerfully, checking his phone when he pulled it out to actually turn on his broadcast rather than simply wear the headphones with nothing playing. There was no point in that, was there?

Besides, it hurt his ears. He might want to bring that up to both his doctor  _ and  _ his therapist, as he didn’t know the cause for that and it might be important.

His mother always told him that if anything was off, anything at all, to tell someone qualified to identify what was wrong. And she was almost always not identified to figure out why he was feeling what he was feeling.

And, if he told himself the phrase enough,  _ he was content _ .

There. He had the same debates in his head every single morning, and it was starting to get tiring, and he shouldn’t be getting tired at all due to his meds. None of their symptoms were drowsiness. Maybe it was all in his head.

Most things were in Dante’s head, as he was finding.

Whatever. He didn’t need to stay in his head more than he had to - after all, the future was bulletproof and the aftermath was secondary, so why did he have any need to think at all?

His first class was a technology course, teaching him the basics of how to use his laptop properly and the most effective way of communicating with peers and facilitators, though Dante was sure he’d taken the same class a few times over. 

Hadn’t he?

Either way, he needed to pay more attention to where his fingers were supposed to go when he was typing, or else he’d start failing because Mr… Mr… Dante couldn’t recall his name since most of the course was spent on his laptop teaching himself through assigned videos and essays, didn’t let him take re-takes of his tests.

If Dante got less than 80% on his next test… It wouldn’t end well, though he couldn’t place what the consequences would be nor where he heard them. It wouldn’t end well.

That was enough motivation for Dante to divert his attention to the brightly lit screen in front of him, carefully putting his headphones back into his backpack and diverting all his attention to trying to figure out why he kept pressing  _ S _ instead of  _ A _ . 

Dante’s coordination had always been bad; he blamed it on the same thing that made his hands ache in the middle of the night, enough to wake him up.

The placement of his blame was there, though blurry; his mother had told him he’d been in an accident when he was a child. He couldn’t recall the incident, but it wasn’t uncommon to lose pieces of your childhood according to his therapist, as well as the moment of traumatic incidents.

He was fine, really, but whatever he’d done as a kid was going to bite him back  _ now _ , because of stupid keyboard keys!

Calm down. He needed to calm down. Right?

Calming down would make him able to focus… Being able to focus would mean he’d get  _ better  _ at his typing... And getting better at typing meant he’d get more than 80%, and he’d never have to figure out  _ it wouldn’t end well  _ really meant. 

Stop thinking, Dante. It’d never done you any good.

Yet, Dante  _ couldn’t!  _ He didn’t get what was stopping him, he didn’t get why it was so difficult to move his pinky the way it needed to move, he didn’t know he didn’t know  _ he didn’t know and he was starting to get mad! _

Dante grit his teeth. He didn’t need another angry outburst. He had too many of them already. He was fine. He just needed focus.

“Mr?” Dante asked, his jaw clenched, smiling politely as his head screamed at him that he had a right to be angry, he’s not annoying, he had a reason and he shouldn’t have ultimatums on something he couldn’t physically do, and - 

“Yes, Uragano?” He didn’t understand why his teacher always called him by his last name. Or why Dante couldn’t remember him wearing or looking any different.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” Dante blurted, too quickly than he meant to and louder than was intended. He’d always had a problem with his  _ inside voice  _ as his mother had always called it. Always. Yeah, always.

“Why? Break isn’t due for another half-hour.” 

Half-hour...half-hour...A half-hour was too long! While the smile on Dante’s face got larger than it shrunk, Dante’s tone was more of a snap than anything. “I have - I have a prescription I need to take at this time.”

No, no he didn’t, but his teacher conceded, with a curt nod and a note that Dante needed to be back within ten minutes.

Ten minutes. Dante didn’t know how long that was. Time was something he’d struggled with - to recall, to track, to read. 

Either way, Dante stumbled to the bathroom, his balance off put the moment he’d stepped into the light of the hallway compared to the darkness of the computer lab his first class was held in, his backpack in his hand and dragging against the impeccably clean floor.

The mirror stared back at him, taunting, asking who he was. 

Dante didn’t know why the reflection in the mirror didn’t seem like him. The mirror never seemed to show him as he was; the hair was too short, his face was too clean, and beyond that...It was like something was missing. He felt the reflection he saw was too pale, too blank, too… He didn’t know. But it was missing something, he knew that.

Maybe it just meant he needed to figure out who he was.

Dante didn’t care about figuring out who he was, though, because he needed to  _ focus  _ and while there was a time and a place for self-exploration, being in the bathroom during his first period was not that. Instead, his hands shook, an ache hitting them the moment he looked at himself, as he opened the smallest pocket of his backpack - gray, standard, only identifiable by the neat nametag on the strap. 

Dante couldn’t write that nicely. His mother could, though.

Nevertheless, he  _ focused  _ and redirected his attention to the pocket he was opening, to the bottle of pills that rattled when he grabbed them to put them on the sink.

He was only supposed to take two in the morning, and two at night, before he went to sleep. But he  _ needed  _ to pass this test and to pass his test he needed to  _ prepare  _ for it and he couldn’t prepare for it if he was working himself up into a frenzy of something he couldn’t fully understand.

So… Maybe he could skip tonight, just so he didn’t mess up his system completely. His mother would be disappointed if he took more meds than he was supposed to, and he was a good kid. He didn’t need any trouble.

He hoped it wouldn’t put him out of it if he took his nightly pills too early, but if he couldn’t focus on two, then another one wasn’t going to help… And his meds made it easier for him to focus, for the ache in his hands to go away; that was what they were designed to do.

Dante swallowed, the decision already made in his head. 

Dry-swallowing his meds was always something that Dante hated; the taste was so foreign and disgusting on his tongue that it made him want to vomit, but he did what he needed to do to pass his test.

It didn’t take effect until he’d already gotten back to class, a glare from his teacher, and his eyes taking more than a moment to adjust to the darkness once again. 

When it did, Dante smiled to himself, content, because he  _ could  _ move his fingers over the keyboard like he was supposed to. He was doing better than he had all week!

Maybe it was childish of him because he knew this wasn’t even a high school level course - it was elementary, or maybe middle school, due to his education being severely impacted by that incident he had as a child, but he was  _ actually going to pass his test! _

Maybe he should take his nightly meds the day of the test, too, to make sure he knew he would get the best possible score. God, he was just glad he’d figured out the best way to get himself to actually do what he was supposed to do.

The words were easy to type. It was just pressing the right keys, watching the right letters pop up onto the screen. Why did Dante usually find it so difficult? What was difficult?

And before Dante could even say he’d sat down for five minutes, an alert popped onto his laptop - time to second period. 

He almost wished it wasn’t a silent cue that told everyone it was time to transition to their next class. Dante missed sound. 

_ Missed sound _ . What was he thinking? There was sound everywhere. He was just being silly.

Regardless, Dante slung his backpack over his shoulder once again, his laptop clutched to his chest as he absent-mindedly made sure he was going to the right class. Second period was history with...with… He didn’t know her name either, but she was a nice old lady who didn’t like him for no reason in particular.

Dante had never been good at history, though recently his grades had been slipping more and more. He was hoping that his early dose of meds would help him focus in history, too, so he could learn at least  _ something  _ he needed for his next history test.

_

His meds didn’t help. The white block of text on his screen in front of him was already zoomed in and simplified into the simplest terms for a kid who hadn’t learned a damn thing for most of his early life, blurred, smeared mops of digital ink designed to make him want to scream.

Dante didn’t scream, though. God only knew the types of trouble he’d get into if he screamed in the middle of school.

Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut, pushing the palm of his hand further and further into his eye sockets like it’d do anything except cause strange shapes behind his eyelids.

He couldn’t read this! 

Maybe it was because he wasn’t processing things right because he was messed up or something, or because he was just an idiot who couldn’t read but he couldn’t - he couldn’t read that!

It didn’t help that his meds did the same exact thing they did every morning - make him focus and actually content with his horrible social and academic skills for an hour before suddenly everything came crashing down again.

It was  _ exhausting  _ to deal with. He just couldn’t fucking read the words on the screen and he  _ knew  _ he should be able to and he was - ugh!

“Do you, um, need help?”

Dante snapped his eyes open, his hands flying down by his legs to grab...Something? He didn’t know what. Huh. 

The person talking to him was shy by the looks of it, in a very ugly gray sweater and a brown haircut that did not match his face well; he looked more tired and worn than you would think a high schooler would look, but Dante supposed Battery City schools did that. 

Then again, from what Dante gathered, he thought cynically, Battery City did that, it didn’t matter who you were or who you were. It only mattered what you were trying to hide.

And Dante was trying to hide how stupid he was.

“Oh. No, no, I’m fine,” Dante smiled,  _ fake _ , knowing well that he had no idea what he was doing and had no idea how to stop feeling so useless.

If he took another dosage, he’d be potentially putting himself in danger as well as completely messing up his prescription and making the lives of the medical professionals and scientists who actually made this stuff way harder than they needed to be. So, he’d suffer through it.

“Don’t mind me saying, but you don’t... _ look  _ fine. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can -” Dante never finished what he was going to say, though something told him that was a good thing. If he hadn’t shut his mouth, then he would’ve snapped, and if he snapped, that would mean he would get in trouble, and if there was anything Dante was opposed to, it was finding trouble.

Trouble meant a lecture. Or worse, it meant intensive therapy, as his therapist had called it with a smile, assuring him that it was an option, but it wasn’t painful or harmful to him in any given way.

For some reason, it still sent a chill up Dante’s spine that he didn’t fully understand. He didn’t fully understand a lot of things, though he operated on the logic that he didn’t  _ need  _ to understand everything, as the future was bulletproof and there were people who got paid to understand the things Dante couldn’t.

And Dante was an idiot who couldn’t even read sentences so simplified a second grader could read them.

Dante sighed, blinking for a moment and then opening his mouth again, much more calm,  _ happier, _ with a smile he didn’t mean plastered on his face. Pretend if he had to because maybe pretending would make him feel more  _ real _ . “No. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing you can do to help me have a Better day.”

The stranger nodded, though something told Dante it was forced, as was the smile he sent back. “Oh, okay. I was just asking to see if you needed anything. I’m Stef, by the way.”

“Dante,” Dante hummed, looking Stef up and down before going back to trying to read the text that seemed to move in front of his eyes more and more the longer he attempted to decipher it. Maybe it was something to do with his laptop - he was starting to think it might be his laptop, due to the fact that he never had the same problem when reading out of a textbook.

Did he?

Dante couldn’t recall the last time he’d read a textbook. When was the last time he read a textbook? Wait a second, what was a textbook, anyway?

Huh. Dante would have to look that up later.

The screen in front of him never changed, but Dante gave up trying to understand it. He’d find a way to pass his test the day he had to take it; no use worrying about it. There were other things that Dante found he cared a lot more about, to worry about.

He didn’t seem like himself recently.

He didn’t need his therapist or his mother telling him that - he knew he was acting off, but he couldn’t figure out why. It was like there was a puzzle piece suddenly missing, but no one knew the puzzle except him, and he wasn’t allowed to actually see it.

It was getting difficult to pay attention in class, talk to anyone outside of the two people he lived with, - even then, Dante spent most of his time in his room - and recall memories from his own past.

Could it be the fallout from beginning to recognize that, yes, an accident happened when he was a child that took things from him? What did it all take from him? What all did he not know about anymore - how much had it affected him?

He knew that he wasn’t supposed to worry about it, that the future was bulletproof and all that jazz, but it was hard to believe in statements like that when Dante wasn’t even given the run-down of what made him this way; just told that it was an accident, that he’d be told when he needed to be told.

Wasn’t it his life? Shouldn’t he have a say in whether or not he got to know what permanently altered his life? Was it because he was sixteen, and they didn’t think he was old enough to view or read content like that?

Well, at his current rate, it wouldn’t be traumatizing at all to read about whatever happened to him, because he could barely read his history work, let alone an incident report.

He would ask when he got home, as well as request his next therapy and doctor’s appointments be moved up. It wasn’t sustainable for him to be this… scattered when he had so many things going on. 

If there was a way to fix it, he wanted to fix it. He didn’t need anyone else - a stranger at that - realizing how torn apart he was by all the questions that plagued his mind when he tried to deny their credibility.

_

By the time Dante was home, he’d learned nothing in his classes beyond how often he got lost in his own head, to the point of not recognizing he needed to go borrow a laptop, as the battery on his was old and lost power quicker than anyone else’s. 

“Mother?” He called, walking in through the front door and softly kicking his toes at the mat to avoid tracking in any dirt. It was a Tuesday. She always cleaned the floors on Tuesday, and she’d be upset with him if he tracked in dirt.

No answer.

“Mother?” He called again, convinced she simply couldn’t hear him. Her car was in the driveway, and his parents didn’t go out together unless it was their monthly date night, and that wasn’t for another week.

Eventually, he gave up waiting for her to hear him, and instead brought his backpack upstairs, to start on his homework and try to figure out what was going to be in his tests.

If he bombed those tests… 

Bombed.  _ Bombed _ . Why did that word feel like it had a different connotation than the definition Dante was using it for?

He was no literary star, but  _ bombed  _ meant  _ to fail _ , didn’t it? Why did it make him so uncomfortable - failing a test wasn’t a laughing matter, and he knew that, but using the term  _ fail  _ didn’t put nearly the same dread in the bottom of his stomach as  _ bombed.  _

That was the reason Dante decided he could put-off his homework until after dinner, closing his laptop with an air of defeat as he bounded back down the stairs to the kitchen - there she was, there was his mother.

“Hi, mother,” Dante smiled, leaning against the counter to see if he could catch a glimpse of what she was making for dinner. He couldn’t, but it smelled good anyway. 

She gave him a smile with the same level of enthusiasm as his back. “Hi, Dante. How was school?”

“It was school. I have to study for my history and technology tests after dinner.” He knew she’d ask anyway, and it was better than telling her that he had no idea what he was doing in any of his classes and that he was  _ afraid  _ of the repercussions that could befall him if he managed to fail every single one of his upcoming tests.

She nodded sympathetically, twirling around the kitchen to find the lid to the pot Dante could now see was on the stove. 

Pasta. Spaghetti, maybe?

Before she could ask whatever question was next on her list - she always asked him the same questions about school, not that he minded - Dante looked at her, at a loss for an explanation. “Why are we having dinner so early? The water’s already boiling and I barely got home from school.”

Placing the lid she’d just gotten out, his mother positively  _ beamed  _ at him. “There are some people here to talk to you later! They’re staying for dinner, though they said they’d arrive early and I want everything to be ready.”

Why were people coming over to talk to him? Dante didn’t like those implications. “Like what? To talk to me about, I mean.”

“That I don’t know, considering it isn’t  _ me  _ they’ll be here to talk to. Nothing bad, I’m sure, dear!” Can she hear the worry in his tone? He was trying not to sound worried!

Dante smiled anyway, though it didn’t match hers in enthusiasm or genuinity in the slightest. “I’m sure. Will they stay long?”

“That depends on why they’re here, dear. We won’t know until they get here.”

“Is father going to join us for dinner, then?” Dante had a feeling that he wouldn’t be. While Dante knew his father… well, there weren’t any certainties he knew about his father. It was rather unnerving the more he thought about it. It was like the man was just like one of those droids he heard about were in the slum districts.

His mother shook her head, her smile fracturing just a bit. She hid it well, but Dante caught it anyway. “I don’t think so. He’s in the office, and I don’t think it would be wise to interrupt his work. But dinner for  _ you  _ doesn’t concern your father, yeah?”

She was trying so hard to get him away from the topic - and, for once in his life, Dante dropped it. There was a gap in his knowledge when it came to the relationship between his mother and his father, and between his father and himself, and it was one of the only blanks in his memories that he’d like to keep there. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, mother. Anything else for tonight I should know?” He supposed he wasn’t too devastated to miss out on studying. It wasn’t his strong suit and it never would be - besides, those tests weren’t pressing.

Nevertheless, the vague answer his mother gave was just enough to know that he needed to still look presentable by dinner time, which would be in about a half-hour from the time she finished talking. 

That meant Dante had a half-hour to complete any extra schoolwork he had - he had none - and clean up because he knew what the look she gave him on the days that he had physical education meant.

_ Go take a shower before we have company  _ was the exact definition, and that’s exactly what Dante did. Showered to clean away all of the grime, and all the icky questions running through his head that stuck with him throughout the day.

The hot water helped with his headache, too. God, sometimes the headaches Dante got were so consistent that he didn’t realize he  _ had  _ a headache until it was going away, though he knew it wasn’t something he should complain about.

Either way, it made him feel like he was prepared to deal with someone coming to the house and talking to him.

He hoped it wasn’t another city official coming to his house to all but spit on their porch.

Last time someone had come over to talk to Dante, it hadn’t ended well. It was a city official who’d turned up unannounced, all but accused Dante of a crime he didn’t commit, and then tried to force a false confession out of him without ever explaining what was going on or why Dante was a suspect to begin with.

Then again, he supposed, everyone in a place of authority seemed to hate him. He didn’t know if that was common for all other teenagers, though his therapist said it was (his therapist didn’t count as a place of authority). 

By the time he’d gotten dressed and fixed his hair, - it was short, but it was frizzy and fluffy and liked to go wherever it pleased - he could hear the sound of unwanted small talk in the kitchen. Their guests were over.

Making sure that the buttons on his button-up were in the first place, Dante swallowed, hoping it wasn’t the same city official and was a different situation entirely, and descended down the staircase for the third time since he’d come home.

“Dante!” His mother laughed, an awkward laugh that meant she wasn’t enjoying the time she was spending with the new arrivals. He felt bad for leaving her to deal with them when they were coming to visit him - 

Oh.

Suddenly, Dante understood why she was acting nervous and awkward. Because, in the nicest terms possible, one of the two new arrivals didn’t look the most...welcoming.

In fact, one of them was dressed in traditional S/C/A/R/E/C/O/W attire, with an intimidating glare and a smile that could send chills down the toughest citizen’s spine.

Somehow, Dante wasn’t scared. He wasn’t scared of the Exterminator, - this was an exterminator, and he knew that, though he couldn’t place how he knew that due to there being no identifiable markers to tell him so - nor was he scared of the glare being shot his way.

“Korse,” Dante greeted stiffly, reading from the nametag proudly displayed on the man’s jacket. 

With a smile just as cold as before, nothing like the warm way Dante’s mother smiled at him, Korse nodded a greeting back. “Hello, Dante Uragano. Would you like to start discussions now, or while we eat?”

“I’d like to know who your companion is,” said Dante, and at that moment, the world narrowed down to him and Korse, and the scenery around them was not his kitchen in the house he’d lived in all his life. 

It was...Something. Whether the overwhelming sense of overheating was due to nerves, he didn’t know, but Dante didn’t have the time to dwell on it before Korse was gesturing for his companion to step forward and introduce himself.

His companion was taller than him, probably standing at about six-foot considering no one besides him was tall, with this blank look in his gaze that sent shivers down Dante’s spine, if only because he could recognize  _ fake  _ when he saw it. “Marco Campbell. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you too,” Dante smiled, noting the lack of an offered handshake. “I believe my mother has dinner prepared already. Should we sit down?”

“Yes, I believe so.” So sit they did.

It was tense. Dante didn’t know why an Exterminator and his… whatever Marco Campbell was were in his home, but he didn’t appreciate it and it sent alarm bells off everywhere.

Dante didn’t know why he was so nervous. He’d done nothing wrong, right? Well… Yes, he had a few anger issues, but he was working on it with his therapist and trying to figure out the right medications with his doctor, and…

He had taken his night meds during school today. Is that why they were here? Were they hear to tell him he was about to figure out what  _ wouldn’t end well  _ meant? Were they here to take him away?

What was he thinking? Better Living Industries wouldn’t do that. Right?

Dante was trying to force his smile to stop being so forced, so tense, but it wasn’t working. At least he could pay attention to his food while his mother handed everyone their servings before sitting down herself. 

“What would you like to talk to me about?” Dante asked, struggling to remember any of the manners his mother had instilled in his head. Maybe he’d managed to forget those, too, when he was in that incident. Great! Just what he needed to find out.

Twisting his fork to take a bite of spaghetti, Korse’s expression was drawn into a thin, tight line. “Actually, Dante, it’s less of a talk and more of an opportunity.”

“What opportunity?” Get to the point. Dante wanted them out of his house as soon as possible. They weren’t welcome, and Dante didn’t have the time to figure out why until they were gone. 

That was when Korse started smiling again, an attempt to be friendly. It wasn’t working - there was an impulse in the back of Dante’s head that told him he needed to  _ run,  _ though he had no idea why he would want to run.

Then again, aren’t Exterminators taught to be  _ threats? _

“Well, we’ve been looking at your file, and we - Better Living Industries, of course - believe you’re fit to be initiated into the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W Program, if you’d so wish,” said Korse, finishing his statement before bringing a bite of food to his mouth and chewing, dropping eye contact with Dante.

Dante was frozen.

Something told him it wasn’t a question, it wasn’t something he could say  _ no _ to, but something also told it was something that he didn’t want. That, if there was anything in the world that he  _ didn’t  _ want anything to do with, it was the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W Program.

“I… I’d like to think about it.” Stay calm, stay cool, stay collected. Nobody needed to see the rising panic that was starting to form in his chest, the vehement dread beginning to swirl up through his stomach, to his chest, to his arms, to the shaking fingertips that held his utensil. 

Suddenly, he didn’t have much of an appetite.

Marco spoke up next, maybe sensing the discomfort Dante had. He was the one watching Dante, noting everything he did, like he was an experiment. “I’m one of the Crow Program’s top students. You should join. You have the build and the experience for it.”

“What… experience do you mean?”

The perfectly placed smile on Korse’s face faltered. Marco’s did not. “Your physical education scores. They’re high enough to warrant our attention, as well as your academics.”

“I told you I’ll have to think about it already.”

Korse gestured Marco to silence with a single move of his finger; Marco backed-down, going back to quietly eating his dinner. “Yes, we’re aware. We’ll need your decision by tomorrow morning, noon at the latest. Please direct your answer to your school-grade counselor.” 

“Understood,” Dante nodded, averting eye contact to instead look at his dinner. “I believe we should eat now.”

“Careful with believing,” Marco smiled, sweet and fake, a warning and a threat boxed together with a pretty little bow on top.

Korse said nothing about the out-of-turn comment Marco made, so Dante didn’t say anything about it either, because giving a tense nod and going back to eating his food.

The S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W Program. They wanted him, a kid who was about to start failing his classes, with more anger issues than was  _ ever  _ permitted, who could barely stand the ache in his hands when he woke up and spend so much time in his head that the clock blurred into a ticking time bomb destined to get him killed.

Get him killed? Where did that come from?

Nevermind that. He was thinking about the Crow Program. He didn’t want to join.

But… Couldn’t it be an opportunity to make him better? If it could quell the ache in his hands and get his anger issues under control…

Dante asked one last question, halfway through his meal. “Would I get paid? If I join, I mean.”

Korse looked up, his fork scratching against his ceramic plate in a way that made Dante wince, though he didn’t know why considering it wasn’t too loud. “Eventually, yes. Once you make it through and get all your high school credits, you’ll begin to get a salary.”

“...Thank you for the information.” Dante didn’t know how else to answer. 

While his stomach was screaming at him that he needed to knock it off right now, that he was going to vomit up his half-eaten dinner if he kept contemplating actually joining the Crow Program, Dante was considering it. It would make sense.

If he got paid well enough, - and Exterminators and Crows must get paid a decent amount, right? - could he afford to get his mother out of this bad apartment? Could he afford to… Could he afford to  _ buy  _ the information he wanted to know?

Even Dante, a kid who never knew how to pay attention to anything around him, knew that money didn’t just buy happiness. It bought you whatever you needed. And if he had enough carbons, he could learn everything his mother wasn’t telling him, everything that his teachers wouldn’t tell him. 

If he had to join the Crow Program to get that… So be it. 

Dante knew the answer he was going to give his school counselor before he even set his plate in the sink, before Korse and Marco left, before his mother smiled sweetly at the table filled with more tension than when Dante and his father were in the room at the same time and offered to get everyone drinks.

Dante  _ even  _ that he was being selfish, that he’d be leaving his mother alone for God knew how long, because his father sure wasn’t up for keeping his mother company, he  _ knew  _ that he’d be leaving behind anything and everything that could go right in his life if he kept on the path that led him to the Crow Program.

But it gave him an  _ opportunity _ . And if Dante knew anything, it was to take opportunities when he got them.

He’d never applied that logic to the decisions he made before, but it made sense, even if he struggled to recall most of the important decisions he’d ever made.

_

Before Dante left for school that morning, after taking a shower and taking his medications and slinging his backpack over his shoulder, instead of a, “Have a better day, mother,” or one of the other phrases he told her every day of his life, he hugged her.

He didn’t know what possessed him to, but he hugged her, as long as he could and as tight as was physically possible for both of them. 

Maybe it was because he knew, somewhere, that he was never going to see her again.

“Starsight, mother,” Dante murmured into her shoulder, and the tear that dripped down his cheek was absorbed by the fabric of her shirt.

With that, he snagged a breakfast bar and left, down the same walk he always walked o the same school he’d gone to for years.

_ Starsight, mother _ .

What did that mean? It wasn’t a good-bye, but it felt like… It felt like the absence of good-bye. But that was stupid because school was going to end and he was going to go home and have dinner and then do the same thing the next day.

Except he wasn’t. 

He wasn’t, because he was giving his  _ yes  _ to Korse’s offer the moment he got to school. He didn’t know how that was going to work, but he had a feeling that was maybe why he had dread pooling in his stomach.

It was fine. He’d be fine. He’d be  _ better.  _

_

Dante had been right. He wasn’t going home, and he knew that the moment he told his counselor that he was saying yes, that he was going to enter the Crow Program.

From that moment on, the air around him was different. A heavier weight to his shoulders, a sluggish beat to his heart like it didn’t want to accept what he was doing.

Dante didn’t understand why that was, but it was fine. He could suffer through it. If someone as lanky and uncoordinated-looking as Marco could end up their top student, Dante could pass through it easily, right?

He was sitting on the bench outside of the dean’s office, sitting with his backpack between his knees and contemplating the weight of his own decisions and his lack thereof, waiting for  _ something  _ to happen. 

A decision like the one he made at dinner was one that Dante personally thought should be enacted the moment he said it out loud. He didn’t know why everything in the city was so  _ slow _ , and why he thought it would somehow all happen quicker when he’d been raised in the same place all his life.

It was probably, once again, the fall out of that stupid incident when he was a kid. God, he needed to figure out what he’d done to himself to end up this messed up, some wrong gear in a machine that ticked away perfectly fine so long as he wasn’t in the mix.

Wouldn’t that metaphor mean he didn’t belong in it in the first place? If you need every single gear in the perfect position to smoothly operate a machine, and it worked perfectly without him… did that mean it didn’t need him?

No. His mother needed him. 

“Dante Uragano?” 

It wasn’t Korse’s chilling voice. It wasn’t his school counselor, or dean, or principal, or anyone else that Dante generally spoke to, really. Still, he had to drag his head up, to make eye contact with Marco.

“Marco Campbell,” Dante said dryly. Marco looked just the same as yesterday - the same uncomfortable white jumpsuit, the same smile that screamed something that Dante couldn’t identify, the same formality to his posture.

“You remember me. Good. Come on, we need to be going now,” Marco barely gave him more than a bored look, already swiveling on his heel to walk out of the room.

Dante fumbled to pick up his backpack, nearly tripping himself over one of the chair legs as he attempted to follow. Marco had an unfair advantage, really, because his legs were long and Dante’s were very much so not.

“Where are we going?” Dante asked, because leaving school before third period was  _ not  _ part of his daily routine and was therefore not something he appreciated in the slightest.

While routine gave him too much time to sit with his thoughts and leave himself wondering about everything that had ever run through his head, it also gave him something to occupy his hands and occupy his frustration.

His frustration was going to be geared at Marco until a new routine could be learned.

Marco did not answer his question. In fact, all Marco did was reach his hand out to his side and snap his fingers at Dante, maybe telling him to  _ shut up  _ or maybe telling him to  _ stop asking questions _ . Well, too bad.

Dante liked to ask questions.

“Where are we  _ going?”  _ Dante repeated, jogging slightly to catch up and glowering when Marco still didn’t give him anything other than a bored glance.

“You’ll figure it out.”

Dante didn’t like that. But he knew he wasn’t going to get any more answers out of Marco than he already had, and it’d be better to keep Marco’s patience intact for when Dante  _ really  _ got on his nerves.

He just had that type of personality.

They walked for five minutes until they came upon a black BMW in the parking lot. 

“Wow, you couldn’t have picked anything more conspicuous, could you?” Dante snickered under his breath, though he climbed into the backseat at Marco’s gesture.

He was not happy that Marco sat directly next to him when the passenger seat was clearly empty. 

Setting his backpack in between them, in the middle seat, Dante looked out the window.

He had a feeling this was the last time he was going to be looking at his high school as  _ his  _ school. He had a feeling that hugging his mother this morning was something that he’d  _ needed  _ to do. 

What was he expecting of the Crow Program?

Something bad, if the feeling in his stomach was to be trusted, but something that could eventually buy his secrets for him.

Dante was watching the streets pass by when Marco spoke, a raised brow in his direction as his very voice caught Dante’s attention, the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up. “I’d keep my mouth shut, if I were you. You’re new.”

“What, does not knowing anything constitute how much I’m allowed to speak?” It was sarcastic, a jab at how formal Marco was.

Maybe the idea of Marco being the top student in a program like the Crow Program is what made Dante think he could just mouth off like that. Because people in positions like Marco’s always thought they were  _ better  _ than Dante.

Wait. But Dante had never met anyone like that before?

“Yes,” Marco answered, in all seriousness, the vaguest hint of amusement dotting his face. “A snake’s tongue isn’t what’s dangerous, but it is what  _ leads  _ to danger.”

“I don’t know what a snake is.”

Marco sighed. “You’ll figure it out. Keep your mouth shut, keep your eyes ahead of you, and  _ never  _ talk to me again.”

_

Never talking to Marco again was going to be an issue.

While Dante didn’t know what Marco’s problem was, and why he seemed to think that Dante was the bane of his existence, he knew that the escort he was given led to the most renowned, visible building in the city.

_ The Tower _ .

True to its name, it  _ was  _ a tower - it stood taller and prouder than any of the high rises, that already seemed to connect the ground to the sky. A sleek, black building with more floors than Dante had thoughts.

Usually, you only saw the Tower when you were in a  _ lot  _ of trouble, or the Director herself had requested your appearance. Dante was hoping he didn’t have to talk to the Director.

Marco didn’t talk to him as he led him into the lobby of the Tower, sparing quiet words with the woman behind the desk, before smiling at her as she waved the both of them down a hallway.

All the hallways looked identical to Dante.

They made his stomach drop with every step, everything in his body telling him to  _ run run  _ **_run,_ ** but he didn’t know why. They were only hallways. 

They were only hallways, and he supposed he would have to get used to it if he was going to be part of the Crow Program, and eventually, a Crow himself.

_ Dante Uragano. S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W operative _ .

It felt wrong on his tongue. It felt wrong in his head. He wasn’t meant to be here.

Then again, he wasn’t meant to be anywhere, was he? At least not that he could remember. All because he was a kid who was too stupid to realize what was going to get him hurt, and then paid dearly for that mistake even now.

“Room 103,” Marco had told him, blankly, pointing vaguely at the door clearly labeled 103.

Dante didn’t want to go into the room alone, but at the same time, he knew that he didn’t want Marco in the room with him, and he knew that his backpack was the closest to a companion he was comfortable being with. 

The room, with completely blank white walls, a single white desk with nothing but a sleek, white laptop, and a white wooden metal chair adorning it, with a cot in the corner, reminded Dante of something, but he couldn’t place what.

He was  _ tired  _ of not being able to place things. He hoped that the Crow Program wasn’t going to interfere with his therapy sessions or doctor’s appointments.

Cautiously, Dante set his backpack down, glancing around before sitting in the uncomfortable white chair.

Marco hadn’t said anything about him needing to go anywhere, or anyone coming to visit him, though Dante didn’t think he’d give him necessary information if Marco had the choice not to.

That being said, Dante opened the laptop hesitantly, wondering if he was supposed to or not. 

The screen flickered to life, even more blindingly white than the walls around him. God, he needed to turn the brightness down.

When he tried to press the dim button, it didn’t work. Great. Hopefully, it wasn’t working before Dante touched it, because he didn’t want to be responsible for breaking something when he hadn’t even been in the Tower for twenty minutes.

When his eyes finally adjusted to the harsh brightness, it was - it was a line of code, quickly followed by whatever program it was using, implementing said code and starting up.

When that was over, which Dante watched in complete fascination, - what? He liked computers - the screen that greeted Dante read,  _ HI, WELCOME _ , with the Better Living Industries logo next to it.

Dante clicked to continue.

The next screen, with the same black-on-white theme and smiley face, read,  _ DANTE URAGANO. WELCOME TO THE TOWER! PROCEED TO THE NEXT SCREEN TO SEE YOUR SCHEDULE. PRESS CTRL+ALT+SHIFT FOR HELP.  _

On and on it went, with instructions and schedules, all with the same boring font and background. 

Not speaking to Marco would be impossible, because according to his schedule, Marco was his guide for the next two weeks to show him how things worked.

Beyond that, he didn’t have any conventional classes, beyond physical education, though something told Dante this wouldn’t just be running laps.

It was hard not to wonder why they would make  _ Marco,  _ of all people, his guide. Why would they want their best student wasting time showing Dante how to read the damn room numbers he was going to?

It seemed like a waste of resources.

Then again, so was enrolling Dante. He wasn’t fit to be a Crow, and he knew that.

Just think about it. He always woke up in the middle of the night because his hands ached, his coordination matched that of a four-year-old’s when he tried to type rather than just use a mouse, he was either too angry or too far in his head.

He’d make a horrible Crow. 

But maybe, just maybe, if he managed to play his cards right, no one needed to know that. If he could actually stay here long enough to start getting paid… It’d be worth it. It’d be worth all the fake smiles, all the same he was sure was going to start from his fingertips. 

It’d be worth it for his mother.

Dante swallowed, firm in his reasoning, closing the laptop in front of him.

On the wall to the right of the doot, was a clock. A digital clock, and according to that, Dante needed to report to Room 4B27 in five minutes.

He had no idea where that was.

The only hallway that didn’t have a door or a lock on it was the one Marco had taken him down, so Dante retraced his steps back to the lobby, to find the receptionist lady. 

He smiled politely, tapping his fingers on the desk in front of her to get her attention. “Um… Do you know where Room 4B27 is…? I’m new.” 

Instead of a polite greeting back, the receptionist startled at his question and...reached toward her hat? Odd.

Dante didn’t understand why until he saw a small lock of purple hair fall from underneath her hat. Oh. So that was why she was wearing the hat. 

“Uh,” She started, nervous, completely different from the way she had talked with Marco. “Um, fourth floor, second - second hallway, room - room 27.”

Huh. Why was she so nervous about him? It couldn’t be the same as why she was hiding her hair.

Nevertheless, Dante made his way to the elevators, heart beating in his chest with every step he took. It was fine.

It’d be fine. The Crow Program couldn’t break him.

_ Nothing  _ as mediocre as the Crow Program could break him. It took -

The elevator dinged, announcing he’d arrived at the floor he’d selected.

Huh. He hadn’t realized he was spacing out again.

Whatever was on the tip of his tongue was gone, another whisper in the never-ending stream of  _ stop it _ that tended to occupy his mind. It wasn’t important.

It wasn’t supposed to be important, was it?

Ghoul followed the lady’s directions down to the letter, cautiously approaching a door labeled just as it was supposed to be - Room 4B27. 

It was a blank silver door, just like the one that led to where he was staying during his duration in the Tower, but it was somehow more sinister. 

Part of Dante thought maybe he was having a reaction to something that happened in the past, something that he couldn’t recall, something that paralleled that moment approaching the door to a T.

Whether or not he was right was something that was above his pay grade, for now at least.

So, Dante opened the door, not bothering to knock, considering his schedule itself is what told him it was time to come to this room.

And when he did, he was greeted with a room of people that all sent shivers down his spine, with smiles so cold they could freeze anyone  _ else  _ in place. 

It was a shame Dante had never been easily intimidated, then. 

Sitting in the only empty chair within the boardroom, next to Marco, Dante nodded his greeting, as he assumed he was late.

Korse was at the head of the table, and began to stand up once Dante was situated. “You’re all here, thank you. If you’ll notice, half of the faces here are you. They are our new students within the Program.”

Looking around, you could tell who had been in the Crow Program and who was new. It wasn’t mortifying to realize that he was easily identifiable as  _ new _ , though Dante had to wonder if it was because he didn’t have near the amount of baby chub in his face when he looked in the mirror as the other fresh-faced, wide-eyed kids did.

Then again, he’d always looked older than he was. Nothing to think too far into, was it? Just genetics and a heap of whatever happened to him when he was little.

“The senior student next to you,” Korse gestured to Marco and Dante, though Marco looked significantly younger than the other  _ senior students _ . “Is your guide for the next two weeks. They’ll teach you what to do and what not to do, but an introduction as a group is necessary. You’ll learn each other’s names as the year progresses on and your training begins. However, for now, there are a few key details you need to understand if you are to make it to graduation.”

Honestly, Dante was having trouble paying attention.

He didn’t know why someone like Korse was giving verbal instruction manuals to new students in a Program he’d already graduated, and with flying colors at that. Korse was an Exterminator - there weren’t too many of them.

It was certainly out of the usual for an Exterminator with as high regard as Korse to give this introduction. 

It was unusual for Marco to be here, to be his guide. Marco was younger than the other kids.

It was unusual for Dante, of all people, to be considered for the Program in the first place.

When you added all of that, it sounded like a disaster in the making, a witch brewing her potion in a cauldron with a smile as she found the perfect combination for chaos.

Whatever that combination added up to be, Dante hadn’t discovered it yet, and he was hoping he never did. 

Such a shame that he’d always had bad luck, didn’t he?

  
  



	2. puts a kid behind that gun!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Party Poison's first Diamond Lowlight doesn't go how it's supposed to, and he's not the only one wondering what was _supposed_ to happen that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have very little impulse control! Here you go - chapter two. Don't forget this one ;)

#  _ Chapter Two _

Stef Campbell was confused. 

He’d been watching that kid, the one who always mouthed off in his tech course, showed up every day though he spent most of the time with his hands on his forehead.

And, when Stef got to school that day, that kid,  _ Dante _ , was not there.

That didn’t just  _ happen _ . 

Stef had been born and raised in Battery City, and he knew that the only reason a kid like Dante would just disappear like that was because something  _ happened  _ and now he needed to be looked after, monitored like a lab rat.

It had always been clear there was something different about Dante. He was too…  _ alive _ compared to everyone else.

Stef knew that he’d been taken away for that, that he was going to become a Burn Out if he survived at all. He knew it happened with all the kids who looked alive, him included if he didn’t keep it under wraps.

Still, he’d never seen it happen to someone so close to him.

Stef didn’t like it. 

It made his heart race as he went about his day, looking over his shoulder in the halls and wondering if there were eyes on him, if the cameras in the hallways were picking up how nervous he was.

If he was next.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that no one knew what he did, that no one could see beyond the veil into the reality of the world they were complacent in.

Why was it so difficult for most people? Was it because they were afraid?

Is it because the same people trying to  _ liberate  _ them were  _ afraid  _ of them? Would people rather listen to empty promises of  _ safety  _ rather than take the leap and find out what was in the unknown?

Destroya, Stef needed to stop thinking about this. It was doing him no good to listen to the ramblings of a madman in his head.

Sometimes, Red and Blue liked to call them the whispers of the Graffiti Bible in his head, but Stef didn’t believe in stuff like that.

And because he didn’t believe in stuff like that, he passed by the cameras without a word, without a thought on his mind. A thought that showed in his face, anyway. 

The bell rang. School was over, though Stef had already put his laptop in his locker and grabbed his backpack. 

“Are you ready?” Stef mumbled under his breath, not daring to look over.

And, next to him, hiding an insufferable mischievous grin underneath her choppy bangs (the ones she’d gotten two weeks worth of City-mandated punishment for), Clare Anderson hummed. “Everything’s in place. You ready to stop chargin’, kid?”

“We’re in the same grade,” huffed Stef, though he couldn’t deny the banter was a comfort in a world that was pressing him between two different versions of himself. “And no. You know I’m not.”

Clare sighed. “I know. Tonight you might have to hit the red line, kid. I worry.”

“Again, we’re in the  _ same grade _ .” Clare was never going to see him as anything more than a baby, and it got old, fast. She was three months older than him, barely. “I’m not hitting the red line. I’m fine the way I am.”

“What, in this  _ hell?  _ There’s no room here for you. You don’t belong here.”

It clicked. 

“...You’re - you’re eatin’ dessert, huh?” said Stef, and even as he said it, it hit him like a brick to the chest, sinking and sinking down into a boiling pot of  _ oh no _ .

Clare smiled at him, though he could only see it at the edge of his vision. “Always, uh, had a sweet tooth I guess you could say.”

“That’s why you want me to hit the red line.” It was blank, empty. Stef didn’t know what to think. Clare was the only thing keeping him here. “You want me to go with you. You - you  _ know  _ I can’t do that!”

“Keep your voice down!”

Stef shut his mouth, if only for a moment to gather his thoughts and make sure they came out both coherently and quietly. He sighed. “Look,  _ Clare _ . I would love to. You know that I - that I belong with  _ color  _ more than I belong with black-and-white, but I can’t… You know I need to find the truth before I find my way twilight.”

“It’s just NewsAGoGo now,” Clare - NewsAGoGo - smiled, a sad kind of smile that said,  _ I know you yearn for the sunset too _ . “And you… Party Poison… I hope you find your way to see your mask.”

Stef smiled too, but he hid what it meant. NewsAGoGo didn’t need to know.

Either way, whether she was hitting the red line or finding twilight or whatever other slang he wanted to use, nothing was going to be the same.

It wasn’t just Newsie leaving. 

It was… Well, it was something bigger than Stef. It was bigger than the mask he masqueraded behind at night; it was bigger than the guise of Party Poison.

Nothing in his lifetime would reach the same height, and he knew it, so he was determined to light the match that set it all off.

He would never go find his twilight. He knew that the Desert held no place for a City boy with a spray paint can.

But the Lobby, the slums, Battery City itself?

It was going to seat him on a throne without even realizing it.  _ Party Poison  _ was going to hold the ring that made him a  _ king _ . Remembered as a nuisance to the Crows and a saint to the gutter kids who never had a chance.

And, well, even a future graffiti king had to manage the walk home without looking too solemn, without letting anyone know what was on his mind.

No matter how much he thought about the future and all it could hold, he’d never even entertained the thought that Newsie wouldn’t be next to him.

There’s something about being in the gutters at night bringing chaos and color to the streets of a monochrome city, something that makes you think the future would never be able to control you.

There was something about it that made you completely forget that you weren’t immortal, that the world didn’t bow to the imagery you brought to life from the blizzard of  _ idea after idea  _ in your head.

But the future could hold him, strangling him with the pressure of knowing he was on his own without Newsie.

Make it through the day.

Then, when night fell, when he became the rebel clawing at the ground to come out of the shadows, well. 

Hold on tight to whatever gets you through the night.

_

“School was good,” Stef murmured before his mother even had the chance to ask.

He knew she would ask, because she always asked, because that’s the only time she willingly talked to her eldest son and it was only because she was required to.

With that, he darted down the hall to his room, dumping his backpack and not waiting to throw himself face-first into his pillow. 

No more Newsie. No more graffiti nights. None of that. She was leaving, and he was all alone. 

He supposed he could start hanging out with Pony and the crew like theirs, but it didn’t feel right. It felt like it was him and Newsie destined to take on Battery City and then claim the whole world as theirs.

But she was leaving. 

No matter how many times he said it, how many times he thought it, it burned like he was rubbing salt in the wound. No matter how many times he told himself to stop thinking about it, his thoughts circled back.

He should be focusing on preparing. He should be focusing on getting ready, making sure that Newsie’s night departure wasn’t going to interfere with the plan at all.

For the night to be successful,  _ everything  _ had to go according to plan, but Stef couldn’t even pull himself together enough to look at the duffel bag hidden in his closet, just  _ waiting  _ to be discovered.

He could do that after dinner, couldn’t he?

Destroya, he didn’t know if he could eat. Was it a good idea to eat before he went out? Would, like, having an empty stomach throw him off enough to mess everything up?

Or would he just get nauseous halfway through and puke while he was supposed to be at his post?

Maybe he just needed to eat half of his dinner. Yeah, half sounded like a good compromise. Then he wouldn’t get nauseous and he wouldn’t have an empty stomach.

Oh, if only an empty stomach or nausea were the worst of his problems, and not his best friend leaving for a hellhole with a one-way ticket and a smile on her face. Was the Desert more alluring than the truth?

Was it a good idea to leave, escape in the chaos? Or was it stupid, foolish, could it get her killed?

Either way, it would happen, and Stef needed to… He needed to escape to the life of Party Poison, for a while, or at least the Party Poison that would be. 

That was why the day passed by without him noticing at all. It’s hard to think of everything holding you back and weighing you down while you were thinking of all the things you  _ could  _ have while shoving canned peaches down your throat.

_

Before Stef knew it, night had blanketed the city and it was time for him to really,  _ really  _ slip into who Party Poison was, is, could be,

Because  _ he  _ was Party Poison, even if he could only be that rebel, that  _ anarchist  _ at night.

The duffel bag in the back of his closest was brought out, and, okay. It seemed horrible. There was no romanticizing his way out of  _ that _ .

Nevertheless, inside were the important things, or the only important things he had so far - a leather jacket, blue, with white piping that he oh so  _ adored,  _ a yellow domino mask, various colors of spray paint, and the most important thing for the night’s Diamond Lowlight; a yellow ray gun. 

He’d never actually used his ray gun before.

And yet, when the jacket was on, the mask covering his face, he didn’t care. He could probably get the hang of it quickly.

He’d need to get the hang of it quickly.

There were no prayers or apologies that he whispered to the wind when he opened his window, the controlled night air barely chilling him. His mother didn’t need them, his father wasn’t there, and… 

And wherever his little brother was, he probably didn’t need them anymore either. 

The streets of Battery City were not an entertaining sight, but Stef - no, no, he was  _ Poison  _ when he was under this mask - was shaking.

Not fear, excitement. His first Diamond Lowlight! And… While Newsie was finding twilight, he was still having his first real rebel activity with her. He could cherish that. It was something he knew she would want him to.

Destroya, why is he talking like that? She’s not dead.

The meeting place was supposed to on the corner of Tarot Street and Helens, but that was a district over and Poison had the time to spare. 

He’d left earlier than he was expecting to, if only because he knew he needed the time to walk and because he wanted to make sure that he knew exactly what was going to happen. And that he had the time to talk to Newsie before she left, make sure they got the good-bye they deserved after the years they spent patronizing the system together. 

_

“NewsAGoGo?” Poison called, through the hushed halls of the abandoned warehouse he was in.

Warehouse? No, no, it was more like it used to be… Where did people use to throw plays and stuff? Was it was a theater? Yeah, yeah that sounded weird enough to be where he was.

Nevertheless, it was packed full of different rebels, their shades of color dimmed underneath their night apparel - sometimes the only camouflage that kept them from getting ghosted out on the streets.

There was only one rebel he wanted to see. One rebel by his side, for one last night, as the people they were supposed to be. 

“Newsie!” Destroya be damned, where could that girl  _ be?  _ It wasn’t like she’d left already! She wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t. And he was starting to get tired of getting pushed around by people much bigger than him in the crowd.

Yet, when he found her… He wasn’t expecting what he saw. 

It was not the Clare he saw at school, and it was definitely not the Newsie he saw at nights. No, because she had brown hair, with a lock of purple that she hid behind her ear. The NewsAGoGo he ran into was not  _ pretending  _ to be a Juvee Hall anymore - 

In fact, she had bright turquoise hair with a shitty, choppy haircut that went down to her shoulders, and thick boots that went up to her thighs. “What the - what the fuck?”

She beamed at him, a genuine joy he hadn’t seen since they were twelve years old and she got the last can of soda they smuggled from Mike Milligram’s stash. “I told you! If ‘m gonna go find my twilight, I have to be dressed for the occasion!”

“But - won’t that - won’t that make it more difficult for you to leave?” Would her astounding amount of  _ color  _ make her a target, or would the chaos completely disguise her? It was always hard to tell whether she was just thoughtful and ambitious, or had a serious case of deathwish on her side.

Newsie shrugged. “I have no idea. Does it matter so long as I get out?”

“Well… If you have food and water I ‘pose it’s fine…” She did know how to take care of herself and had run her short legs quite a way’s away from cops on multiple occasions. Sometimes it wasn’t a good idea to break into other districts past curfew.

With a gesture to the satchel on her side, Newsie smiled once again. “I do. I’m gonna be fine out there, make a name for yourself. Same thing as always, jus’...somewhere else, yeah?”

“Not yeah. But - but we’re gonna have a good night.” If this was going to be his last night with Newsie, then he was going to make it count. 

Besides, he’d started to get excited the moment he’d seen people in the crowd, identified only by the red bandana tied around their necks, passing out what he could only assume were smoke grenades. How big was this going to be?

“Not a good night. The best damn night of our lives so far. And - you dressed up for the occasion!”

“Not everything is about fashion,” Poison laughed, if only because it was  _ normal  _ banter and that was something he needed. 

Before Newsie could answer, they were whisked away from each other - not for long, he hoped, but doing his best to see over the crowd, she’d been herded toward a group of rebels dressed in similarly appalling apparels. 

The others escaping tonight.

Well… He hoped they got what they were looking for. Maybe Newsie would be the one to go out and find Destroya, liberate the city and save everyone. 

Tough chance.

Nevertheless, he looked forward rather than the past, toward the one who’d directed him toward the group he was standing with.

They were dressed for the occasion rather than an escape - their masks and ray guns were the only colorful things about them, similarly to Poison. Other than that, they were in full black, ready to blend in with the alleys and those that BLI deemed  _ less.  _

“Some of you are here for the first time.”

What? Poison looked up, searching for the source of the voice only to find it belonged to what looked like - shit, was that Mike Milligram?

Poison hadn’t seen him since he was fourteen!

“And some of you are here for the fourth, fifth time.” Yeah, that was definitely Mike Milligram. He had the same rasp to his voice, the same drawl to his f’s. Naturally, the same neon pink hair, too. 

Sometimes Poison wondered if Milligram used to be a killjoy, too, but the Desert held no place for legends like him. It wasn’t a thought he liked to ponder when his best friend was the one risking her life to go into the sands.

Milligram laughed, condescending, bubbling with anger - even Poison could see that. “I feel bad for the newbies. This isn’t like your other Diamond Lowlights. We aren’t hitting the Lobby tonight. If you… If you want to leave, feel free. This ain’t everyone’s cuppa tea.”

Poison wasn’t leaving. He was new to all of this, the harsher side of rebelling, but if Mike Milligram was the one in charge of it, then he knew it was going to be something big. Something that could, potentially, make Party Poison a name whispered in the alleys, if only for a moment here or there.

“That bein’ said, I hope you brought your masks an’ ya prayers, ‘cos not everyone is gonna make it out of this. We got a group leavin’ for the Desert an’ we got people to rescue. You in?” 

That was all Milligram had to say. It wasn’t particularly inspiring and it wasn’t anything that should make him such a hero, idol, legend, or whatever else you’d like to call him, but a cheer went up throughout the crowd, hyping each other up for what Poison was starting to think would be a Death Disco.

He couldn’t help but speak up, speak over the cheers of barely contained glee and rage against the company. “So - So who’s telling us what we need to do? I don’t understand!”

And Mike Milligram  _ laughed  _ at him. The attention of the crowd was drawn with the silent promise of a scene, all staring at Poison. “Really, kid? D’ya know how these Lowlights work?”

Milligram didn’t wait for an answer to continue, leaving Poison standing there baffled, confused, and a bit humiliated when he saw all the different Halls laughing under their breaths. “There ain’t no plan. If there was a plan, there’s a secret, an’ you know BLI’s always got a way to find out secrets. You’ll need to know what you need to know when you need to know it.”

That wasn’t…. Confusing at all.

Poison didn’t have a chance to ask anything else before the attention of both Milligram and everyone else was focused on something else, leaving him with burning red cheeks and an inflamed sense of  _ hatred. _

Against what, he didn’t know, but he didn’t like being talked down to like that.

He didn’t like Newsie not being there to tell him what to say and what not to say, because she’d been to one of these before and he hadn’t, but she was going to the Desert and she hadn’t said good-bye before she got whisked away.

_

Poison had never been in one of the high rise districts.

He’d been through them, in the back of a car that took him to the police station to force-feed a lie down his throat and into every aspect of his life.

And yet, when he saw the high rises in the distance, they were all that glittered to him. Not the glitter in front of him, sparkling from a woman’s hair, or the way glass windows in the slums manipulated the slight smog in just a way to make it almost beautiful.

They reached the sky, there was no doubt about it. He  _ hated  _ it.

In a city made from ashes and destruction, the privileged and the manipulators were still the ones who watched the sunrise every morning, who could kill thousands with a flick of their wrists.

Then there were the people like Poison, the ones marching with anger in their veins and swirls of indignance in their eyes. The people who got killed on the streets for not having their headphones at the right volume, the people who got  _ lied  _ to, and got their families taken away.

The people who were tired of a system that was not designed to benefit them.

The sheer number of them marching through the streets was bound to be noticed - after all, the walk to the high rise districts was a mile or two with all the turns and twists taken into consideration, and no one was supposed to be out after curfew.

Fuck curfew. Fuck BLI. Fuck Newsie. Fuck Battery City. Fuck Mike Milligram.

Poison decided, on that cold walk, shivering despite the jacket around his shoulders, that he was not doing this for anyone else.

The rebellion he wanted wasn’t the one he was following. The rebellion he was following went in with no plan, no regard for the casualties they’d sustain, no regard for those that would be caught in the crossfire.

It was a glorification of war. 

If there was anything Poison wouldn’t give up, for the world or for his hatred of the city, it would be leather-bound books he found, the ones that documented the fall of the world before and the ones that told history dating back to the sixteenth century.

He knew that Better Living Industries was corrupt. He knew that they didn’t have the heart of their people in mind and he knew that they didn’t care about anything beyond maintaining control and making the city as  _ Better  _ as possible.

But rebels like Milligram… They saw planning and organization like a curse, like what they were fighting against. They saw it as a bad thing. 

It wasn’t a bad thing, though. It was an efficient use of tactics to make sure that BLI always  _ won. _

That’s why these Diamond Lowlights didn’t do what they were supposed to, wasn’t it? Because… because they were just rushing in expecting to win like it was some pre-War action movie. 

It didn’t work like that!

That’s the moment Poison realized he was doomed, that he wanted to leave and that it was time to go and and  _ and -  _

He couldn’t.

He couldn’t, he was far too involved to step back, stuck between other rebels marching to what might just be their deaths, and for  _ nothing _ .

Poison didn’t want his death to be worth nothing. He didn’t want to die.  _ He didn’t want to die! _

The rising panic in his chest kept him from running away, a morbid curiosity of what was going to happen keeping his feet taking step after step against his permission.

Looked like he was still going to his first Diamond Lowlight after all. And he wasn’t going to be a coward, he decided. He wouldn’t run if death came to call for him.

“Pray to your saints,” Poison muttered to himself, no saint on the tip of his tongue as he clutched his ray gun with white knuckles, a burning burning  _ burning  _ need to follow through with this.

What could this be considered, anyway? A deathwish, a life sentence? Who cared?

The high rises were within their sight. It was time for the rumble to begin. 

The ground shook with the weight of hundreds of damned souls, no regard for their own well-being, and individual agendas painting the sky the same shade as the artificial barrier between them and the true sky.

###  **_“Are you ready to make some music?”_ **

That was what the crowd wanted to hear, and that was what Mike Milligram delivered, with bright pink hair and scarred tan skin, an idol on a broken glass pedestal.

The shouts and the cheers were enough to realize that if they were worried, they hid it. Then again, Poison cheered with them, wishing that maybe, maybe,  _ maybe  _ it would make him forget his revelations.

He was just a dumb kid with too many thoughts, after all. Death’s call had never ignored reckless children, but maybe he could be the exception?

After that announcement, call to arms, whatever you wanted to call it, plans and decisions spread by word-of-mouth. Because that was reliable.

Poison would be part of the group that was actually going to be in the heart of the action and the danger - within one of the high rises. 

When the clock hit ten, Poison and twenty others were going to storm the first floor of one of the high rises, which would be pointed out to them when they needed to actually enter the building.

Then, five of them - Poison included - would go in different directions, and by that time their objective would be revealed.

Beyond that, the others would cause chaos for the Crows in either other areas of the City, or other parts of the high rises to distract them. When the infiltrators were finished, riot squads would go in and start torching the place down.

And then it wouldn’t be their problem, and the Diamond Lowlight would be finished. Not intimidating at all.

Not like everything and anything could go wrong due to the lack of organization and set instructions. Destroya, he was going to get himself killed, wasn’t he?

At the very least, and where he found himself before the raid, Poison got supplies specifically for the raid. A backpack, clunky but easy to run in.

Smoke grenades, for when they first entered. Knives, for if they encountered trouble on their journey.

And matches, for when they helped the riot squad as they left.

“Are you ready?” grinned the Juvee Hall next to him, someone Poison didn’t know the name of and didn’t plan on learning, slicked back greasy hair and shaky hands from the anticipation, the adrenaline.

Poison swallowed and grinned back, fake and too cheerful. “Yeah. Yeah - what - what are we lookin’ for, anyway?”

“I hear,” said a girl next to them, blond hair pulled back into a ponytail and so goddamn white Poison had to blink a few times. “That we’re gonna be liberatin’ some ‘joys that got captured from out in the Desert.”

“Don’t they just execute them?” What? Poison kept up with the news.

The guy shook his head. “Nah, not all of ‘em. Only the ones that cause the most trouble. Us Juvees got it way better, man, I’m tellin’ ya!”

“Not if this goes badly!” The girl snickered, high-pitched, and definitely not what Poison wanted to be hearing when it was his life on the line for what was supposed to be his first big act as a rebel.

Maybe he should’ve brought it. Whatever.

With that, he walked away, and his time coincided perfectly with the signal that they needed to  _ go go  _ **_go_ ** **.**

A flare sent up from the other side of Battery City, so bright and so loud that Poison damn near watched in shock with everyone else.

But he had a part to play and a job to do, and he found himself running, hitting the pavement with no regard for the weight on his back, time to go time to go  _ time to go. _

Someone had already broken the lock, working on it before the flare went up. 

There were no alarms, no blaring sirens or flashing lights. Just an empty, silent lobby and a lack of patrons. 

There were some people rushing in front of him, the more experienced Juvees who probably knew what they were doing. It wasn’t storming the building if there wasn’t anywhere there to overwhelm.

And Poison spoke too soon, because as soon as he thought that he caught sight of a Drac, coming from one of the stairwells and unsuspectingly eating a sandwich or something.

Poison wasn’t the first one to notice him. By the time Poison had the time to turn his head, the Drac was falling with a smoking ray gun blast painting his white jacket.

Then it was a blur of clothing and ruffling and weapons and Poison looking around in confusion to try to find who he was paying attention to, but there wasn’t much talking.

More pointing than talking, based on someone in front of him pulling on his collar and pointing toward one of the stairwells further back, putting an extra smoke grenade in his hands and rushing off before Poison had the chance to say  _ thank you _ .

He wasn’t one to be the reason everything fell apart. He rushed toward the stairs, in a blind run not knowing what his objective was. 

Whatever he found, he was supposed to  _ take  _ it, right? Instead of destroying it, because that's what the riot squads were for.

So, why did the guy hand him a smoke gren - 

Oh. 

Poison threw the smoke grenade after pulling the pin, swallowing dryly and spinning on his heel only to discover that he couldn’t find his way out of the hallway he was in if he tried - it was all smoky and hazy and too difficult to see through.

Okay then.

He rushed forward, holding his arms in front of his face and  _ pushing  _ past the Draculoids that greeted him, kneeing one between the legs and getting shoved against a wall before he reached toward his ray gun before the Drac could grab him, not knowing whether the safety was off or -

It wasn’t off.

The light from the blast illuminated his position in the smog and his shoulder hit the wall painfully from the ricochet, but Poison couldn’t feel it and Poison didn’t care as he started to run toward the stairwell again.

At least the blast had shown him where he was going, exactly, and he didn’t trip down the stairs when he reached them - he was going to one of the lower levels.

Fuck. That meant it was going to be more difficult for him to leave.

But at some point down the flight of metal stairs, the smoke from his earlier grenade cleared. Poison wished it hadn’t.

The girl, when she said they were liberating some ‘joys from the Desert, she was right.

It was like they were in cages, like a tomb of metal and iron keeping them like animals, lined in a row twenty-long on each side, each cage reaching half-way to the ceiling.

The locks weren’t padlocks, at the very least, and it seemed like they had clean bedding. Like that could pardon what Poison was seeing.

But he didn’t have the time to revel at the many, many human rights violations he was seeing as he ran up to the first  _ cage _ , looking at the lock that held the door closed.

Electronic. Of course. How was he supposed to do this -?

“The walls are electrocuted,” the occupant of the cage muttered, half-dyed hair hanging limply in their face. Like they’d lost all hope.

Well, Poison was gonna give about as much hope as a sledgehammer to their brains, ‘cos he wasn’t here to fuck around. “Cool, I guess. I’m gonna - try something.”

He didn’t know if it would work and he didn’t have enough time to safely test it out, but Poison swallowed dryly and took one of the only knives he had on his person, a switchblade from his backpack.

He was glad he was wearing gloves when he jammed the knife into the screen of the cage lock thing, whatever it was called.

Half of him anticipated a shock and the mourning of a shocking death, but - that’s not what happened. 

Nothing dramatic happened. A few sparks from the lock and that was it. 

Poison hesitated, cautiously pulling the door open. 

No electrocution. No electricity, no lock. 

“You have a knife?” Poison asked the ‘joy, already expecting the answer to be no and grabbing some vaguely sharp object out of the side of his backpack - he thought it was a Swiss army knife or something like that - and handing it to the killjoy. “Here. Help me, then run. Yeah?”

The killjoy took the knife with a spark of something in their eyes, something that might just be hope, nodding before rushing off to the next cage.

Poison could clearly see the DEAD END sign at the end of the hallway. Just… Thirty-nine more cages to jam open. 

In his time limit? That was going to be… Difficult. He hoped that the killjoys got the idea that the cage wasn’t electrocuted once he broke the lock, because he didn’t have the time to talk to all of them.

It took enough time to jam his switch into the locks and then pry them out of it, and he had a funny feeling it wasn’t going to be this easy. If he’d learned anything about being a rebel within the City, it was that -

There it was. He was right, it seemed.

Because, of course, right after he thought that, there came the blaring sirens and the white flashing lights. The distraction team must’ve stopped distracting, then. 

Alright. Alright, he only had a few more cages left and then he could be gone, just up a flight of - 

Or, he could be shot at.

Poison did not appreciate being shot at. It’d happened once or twice before and it wasn’t something that he enjoyed.

Then again, he was - wait! Why the - why the fuck was he not responding to being  _ shot at?  _

Poison wasn’t experienced in fumbling for his ray gun and knowing that the shock would send him flying backward if he didn’t stand right or something, but he was more focused on identifying who the enemy was and who the friends were, the switchblade forgotten in the holster where the ray gun once sat.

All enemies, naturally, all along the flight of stairs that the killjoys - and he - needed to use to escape.

“Not goin’ the easy way, huh, boys?” 

He doesn’t know where the easy drawl came from, but it made him seem older and it made him seem confident. He was not confident.

He wasn’t confident in his aim, but there were enough Dracs to make sure that when he pulled the trigger, barely flying backward himself, it hit its mark.

The killjoys were far enough away from them,  _ fearful of them _ , that Poison knew he wouldn’t be able to hit them if he tried. So he kept going, shot after shot and knowing knowing  _ knowing  _ that he wasn’t on schedule and that he needed to  _ finish  _ and  _ leave  _ before the riot squads came and destroyed the place.

But he couldn’t do that with Dracs in the way, could he?

He knew he’d told himself that wouldn’t resist if Death came to call, but that was a lie and he knew it - he wasn’t dying like a caged animal, not like these killjoys were bound to have died, not like a rat in the streets.

No. 

He was  _ Party Poison,  _ and this was where he started making a name for himself.

Pain shot through his shoulder.

He didn’t notice. The killjoys needed to get out. He needed to make sure they got out.

He still had more cages to open. If any of the stray blasts hit through the bars… Fuck! That just - fuck, he wasn’t thinking through this enough - 

Oh. Onh, that would be  _ perfect. _

The killjoys who’d already left their cages were helping each other, hell - some of them were even fighting the Dracs, but most were standing on the side out of the line of fire. 

And the killjoys in cages couldn’t get shot if the blasts were directed at neither the escapees or the still-captured.

With a grunt and a prayer, Poison tested his luck, hastily jamming his ray gun into his mouth -  _ hot hot hot _ \- before gripping tight to one of the bars and - 

There!

Poison’s foot grasped the broken lock, just enough leverage for him to pull himself to the top of the cape, away from any of the bystanders.

The trick would be not falling. He’d have to dodge without moving his feet. Piece of pie, right?

Well, the Dracs gathered themselves and started their relentless assault again - they had truly bad aim, but Poison had extraordinarily bad balance and things were not looking good for him.

By the burning in his shoulder and the way his ankle damn near crumpled underneath him when he twisted and avoided getting a shot to the head, this was going to be his last stand.

You know what? Fuck that.

He wasn’t fuckin’ dying, and he wasn’t being training practice. 

Killjoys damn well knew how to take care of their own. It was time for the  _ Juvee Hall  _ to show them how to  _ not fucking die _ . Where was the confidence when he needed it?

Poison jumped down from the cage, flaring in his ankle only registering with half of its intensity when he landed in a crouch, rushing forward before the Dracs had time to readjust their aim. 

“Run!” Poison hissed to the Juvees, tackling one of the white uniforms and pulling the trigger of his ray gun, blood and smoke splurting from the Drac’s forehead, hastily yanking the ill-fitting switchblade out of his holster and - 

Someone’s knee crumpled, a white uniform and that was all Poison needed to know, the sound of a sliced bone ringing in his ears even as he got up.

Poison wasn’t used to hand-to-hand combat. He’d never been in a fight like this and he was outnumbered ten to one.

He’d never make it, and he wasn’t going to let the obvious stop him.

Because he wasn’t going to die a hero, like everyone else who died in - he jerked a Drac’s shoulders forward, slamming his knee into its nose and spinning around before he could get jumped by another - this building. Fuck that.

A chance glance up, through the white uniforms dwindling in their numbers around him, and a fair number of killjoys were still just  _ standing there _ .

“Run!” Poison repeated, teeth clenched tight as he swung his switch around in a blind circle, blood painting his jacket as it found a target.

“No!” A voice from the other side of the room - one of the killjoys but he couldn’t identify who. “We’re helping you!”

“You’d fuckin’ help by running so I can too!”

If they ran, he didn’t have to kill anymore Dracs, wouldn’t have to do anything. He could run too.

It wasn’t a coward’s way out, it was a survivor’s decision because  _ he wasn’t dying here.  _

So, the killjoys ran, shoving anyone in their path and that included some of the white uniforms, right into Poison and right into his switch,

They could all suck it, it’s not like it hurt BLI’s ranks or anything. Of course it didn’t. 

Poison waited until the last shock of color was one, up the stairs, before he swallowed, looking at the - the four, five Dracs that were on the stairs by then? 

And with that, he ran.

But not up the stairs.

He still had cages to open, he wasn’t just  _ leaving them there.  _

It took time to jam his switch into the lock and it took even more time to jimmy it free, but the Dracs seemed to have given up on shooting at him, confusion in their clunky movements as they ran toward him - not ran, more like - like walked, but he knew he didn’t have much time and  _ three more cages _ .

People didn’t deserve to live or die in cages. Poison wasn’t letting them. Blood painted his jacket and he was starting to lose his burst of confidence, but he wasn’t letting anyone die on his watch.

He looked up, pulling the switchblade out of the lock with too much force. They were approaching.

_ Two more cages. _

The Dracs were about four cages away. They weren’t large cages.

Another lock let the knife free.  _ One more cage. _

One of the Dracs lifted a ray gun, a quick movement Poison saw out of the corner of his eye and identified as a setting being switched.  _ Set to kill _ .

A few sparks came out of the last lock as it was stabbed. The Dracs were too close for him to - shit!

Poison ducked to avoid being shot in the head, lifting his own gun and not bothering to see where it hit before he frantically tried to shake the switch free, push the door open. 

What were they -? No!

Poison shot again, this time hitting one of the Dracs dead in the chest, but he was too last. 

The blast sparked to life and left the white ray gun in a flash, in the doorway of one of the cages, where a colorfully dressed rebel was standing.

They fell.

Poison didn’t bother even attempting to get the knife free, rather putting both hands on their gun and  _ firing firing  _ **_firing._ **

Drac, miss, Drac, miss, miss, Draculoid, miss, Drac. 

All of the remaining adversaries were down, but his job wasn’t done and he had the common sense to finish removing the switch from the lock before rushing toward the downed killjoy. 

He was hoping he’d gotten the brunt of the responding Dracs, ‘cos that’s what it felt like and he hoped no one else got hurt.

The killjoy was still alive! It was confirmed with a quick check of pulse, it was a shot to the stomach but it must’ve still been on stun for some reason, and Poison quickly threw their arm around his shoulder.

He couldn’t exactly run like this and he didn’t know if he could carry them fireman’s style.

Did he have a choice?

He glanced around, a quick, fleeting look at the four fleeing killjoys, whooping and hollering and some downright silent as they darted up the staircase.

Fuck it, he didn’t have the  _ time  _ to help some unconscious killjoy walk.

If the ray gun was on stun, they probably still had a chance.

It wasn’t easy to lug them onto his shoulder, but Poison did, holding tight to their jacket collar to keep a grip as he tried to get to the staircase as quickly as possible on the off-chance there were more Dracs being sent down.

The violence wasn’t going to end when he got out of the lobby and he knew that, but it was as good a starting place as any and he needed a short-term goal, something to stay alive for.

First stair.

Second stair.

Fourth.

On-and-on it went, grunting and cursing at the weight of someone else on his shoulder throwing his already-shitty balance off, the smoke from the earlier smoke bombs still painting the corridor in a haze, a foul smell in the air, bodies along the floor a tripping hazard and sirens and lights there as barely background noise.

There was… Oh, so the corridor wasn’t just smoky with the remains of the grenades.

Looked like he’d just missed their parting gift, a woman in a fireproof suit running past him with a lighter and a can of… Was that air freshener?

Whatever, the point was that he was supposed to get across an  _ entire lobby  _ with  _ flames  _ coating the floor and  _ someone else on his shoulder.  _

Did Destroya just hate him? Destroya might just hate him.

He went to sigh, but too much smoke made it into his lungs and he started to cough, eyes watering with the intensity of his chest heaving before he took a final gulp of air and - 

Something fell from a ceiling, Poison unable to dart back due to the killjoy’s weight.

It blocked his path, fuck.

Was it a good idea to kick something burning in the hopes that it’d fall?

Maybe not, but that’s what Poison did, his lungs starting to claw for fresh air that  _ he couldn’t get. _

It - a wooden beam, he thought - moved. Slightly.

Just enough that it fell closer to being flat on the floor, just enough for Poison to hope he could leap over - 

He could. 

But he didn’t stick the landing. 

In fact, he landed, in another slight patch of flame, but his ankle snapped to the side, bringing him crashing to the ground - along with the killjoy’s weight on top of him, and flames above him, already starting to singe at his hair.

There was the pain in his ankle. He couldn’t get up with that - he couldn’t push the killjoy off, he’d lost all the air in his lungs and the smoke was - was making him - him cough again, and - and he…

Destroya, it wasn’t supposed to get black around the edges of his eyes, was it? That wasn’t - that wasn’t… good… Was it?

A “help,” was useless, but it - it fell from his lips, anyway, face contorted in a scream he couldn’t release, the world… falling… around him.

That’s where Party Poison passed out, an injured escapee, ironically, preventing his own escape, and riot squads around him with strict orders and various forms of arson. 

_ Sleep well, Killjoy. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, what'd you think? :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dante's new, and Marco's a hypocrite; what could you expect from a Crow with a stick up his ass?  
> ...Then again, what could you expect from the boy who beat his ass in a spar?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have. 140k written out for dreams already xoxo

Dante wasn’t exempt from classes simply because it was his first day.

After the briefing, he was given a backpack with the supplies he needed for the year; he was told he should already know what class he was going to next.

The white jumpsuit handed to him was too loose, too much of the fabric pooling around his wrists and ankles. His  _ uniform  _ for the rest of the year left much to be desired.

He’d also been given a white jumpsuit, his name sewn onto the breast pocket; it’d be his uniform for the rest of his stay. He could not pull off a white jumpsuit with ash-blond hair. 

Like Korse and the rest of Better Living Industries had anticipated his answer.

He was being paranoid. Yeah, Dante had an issue with paranoia - both his therapist and his mother could attest to that. It was best to get the thought out of his head before it caused any rash decisions.

Marco was supposed to knock on his door at any second, but Dante couldn’t help pausing, a wonder in the back of his head. 

A  _ ray gun.  _ Why did he need a ray gun?

Yes, this was  _ The Crow Program,  _ of all places, but… It was training, not fieldwork. They wouldn’t put someone like him out in the field unless it was a controlled experiment.

When there was a knock at the door, Dante was late answering it, jamming the ray gun into the holster by his side. Another interesting bit included in his backpack. 

Marco’s face was passive, something  _ cold  _ in his gaze that sent a shiver down Dante’s spine. “You were late.”

Dante swallowed. “And your, uh, your attitude leaves a bit to be desired, doesn’t it?”

“Desirability is a made-up concept,” said Marco, not a hint of inflection in his tone. He might as well have been another android off the factory line - Dante wouldn’t be surprised.

Their walk to the lobby of the Tower was in silence. 

Silence was, when Dante was at his best, an adversary. Eventually, he couldn’t help but open his mouth. “So, what’s happenin’ in this first class of ours?” 

“ _ Happening,  _ enunciate. We aren’t in the slums.” Marco wasn’t a fan of the slums, then?

Made sense. Everything about the Tower was  _ clean,  _ and the slums - the Lobby - were anything but. The smog covering the ground had something to do with that. 

“Nevertheless,” Marco continued, seeing Dante had no comment to add about his enunciation. “Today’s schedule is chock full of physical education. We’ll be starting off with ray gun technique and accuracy.” 

“Shouldn’t… We start off with something more simple? I’ve never -”

“Shot a ray gun, yes, I know.” Why was Marco annoyed? He was just asking a question! “Curiosity is best kept to yourself. Follow your instructions and you might become a Crow.”

It sounded like a suggestion made from a system, not something from a person. 

_ Follow instructions, and you might become a Crow.  _

Might? Where did  _ might  _ come from? Wasn’t the Crow program honed to have only the best candidates and the best students? 

…Had Dante ever heard of or met a failed Crow student?

Before he could ask another question, - as if Marco would answer if he did - the elevators at the back of the pristine white lobby came into view.

According to his schedule, they’d be going up toward the eighteenth floor.

_Eighteen floors_ _above the ground,_ and that wasn’t even half the height of the Tower. 

The high rise districts and the high rises themselves weren’t points of interest for Dante - he’d never set foot in one and, before he was in the Crow Program, he never planned to.

Something about them was  _ off  _ to him. It was hard to place, but he knew they were wrong. Something like the high rises wasn’t  _ meant  _ to wrestle for control of the sky.

“Shouldn’t skyscrapers express wealth rather than authority?” Dante hummed, stepping foot into the glass elevator. It was an expression of  _ power _ to stand in the only building within the city that towered over every other.

The glance out of the corner of Marco’s eye didn’t go unnoticed; calculating, cold, not a hint of curiosity. Crows weren’t designed to be curious, were they? “That doesn’t make sense. It’s just a reminder of how we’re protecting people. They can see where we are at all times and know we’re protecting them.”

“That sounds…” It sounded like a delicate way to control what happened in the streets. Less like it was overlooking for the sake of protection and more like it was overlooking for the sake of  _ control.  _ “Like you’re the bad guys, to me.”

Marco frowned. “Then I’d keep that to yourself, if I were you.”

Why? Why should he keep his opinions to himself? Wasn’t it healthy to have debate, a level of skepticism in everything? That was what Dante’s mother had always told him -  _ critical, not complete. _

_ Complete  _ as in a complete, wholehearted belief in what he was told. 

Then again, she’d also always told him  _ faith over foolishness.  _ Take everything with a grain of salt, but… Well, he didn’t know about the  _ faith  _ phrase. He was figuring that out as he went. 

“Is there a reason you want me to keep that to myself?” It was better to ask first and critique second, wasn’t it? Dante was covering his bases. That wasn’t a bad thing. It was something that should be encouraged. 

Right?

Marco shrugged, reverting back to the blank Crow-in-training Dante had seen at dinner. “You can figure that out yourself.”

Dante didn’t want to figure that out himself.

_

A ray gun shot a bright, white laser beam toward its target. A ray gun was also an integral piece in the puzzle of becoming a Crow. 

Dante hadn’t shot a ray gun before he was standing behind a white line on a gray, concrete floor, staring down a target painted in a black. 

Forty feet away.

Too far away for a beginner, but Dante took a deep breath, assured himself that he was within the Crow Program for a reason and he wouldn’t be expected to accomplish something he couldn’t, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, Marco was staring intently with crossed arms in Dante’s peripheral vision, lips pressed into a thin, hard-line. 

Marco was background noise.

The target was clear - Dante barely had to register the way he was standing or what setting his ray gun was on before he grinned, pulling the trigger.

The following ricochet didn’t throw him back; the way he was standing prevented it.

Dante blinked. And blinked again. 

Bullseye.

Only when he remembered Marco was next to him, analyzing every move he made, did he look over and smugly puff out his chest.

“Ha! Bullseye!” Dante taunted, pivoting on his heel to smirk at whoever was behind him - Marco, of course, since they were the only two left in the room.

Dante had also asked about that. Apparently, everyone else was excused, but they wanted to get a gauge of how Dante handled himself and they wanted both of them to stay longer to see how their stats compared.

He liked winning, and the smoking bullseye behind him attested to that, but he didn’t think that pitting the two of them against each other was such a good idea. 

Marco rolled his eyes, a grimace painting his face. It did not suit him. “Whatever. Keep showing off and I’ll make sure you have nothing left to show.”

Marco sure had a funny way of saying  _ good job!  _

Nevertheless, when Marco lifted his ray gun, Dante watched in fascination - not because he couldn’t replicate it, but because the style was so… Well, it was too stiff.

Sure, he hit the target dead-on when he fired, but the ricochet shook his shoulder and his foot slipped. Only a tiny bit, but Dante noticed it anyway. And he was only using one hand, most likely just because he wanted Dante to know how much Marco didn’t like him.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Dante frowned, stepping up next to Marco to begin to correct his posture as the burning target was automatically taken down and replaced by another. They’d be doing that until another hour, where they’d then shower and go to bed.

Seemed like a fun day!

“I’ve been doing this for years,” Marco snapped, elbowing Dante to get the hell away from him. 

Dante backed up, frowning, rubbing his chest. Why was Marco so snappy? Dante was just trying to help him! “That doesn’t mean you don’t have room for improvement…”

“Room for being  _ Better,”  _ corrected Marco, pointedly not sparing a glance in Dante’s direction.

Dante didn’t know why Marco was so opposed to him being there. Yes, it was odd, but just because Dante was new didn’t mean that Marco had to make him feel alienated and inexperienced. 

God, times like these he  _ really  _ wanted to be able to talk to his therapist. He hadn’t asked about it, but he had a feeling that the Crow Program was going to completely overtake his life, including his doctor and therapy appointments.

Between the two of them, Dante and Marco, thirty-one targets were hit dead-center within the hour, if only because they weren’t the most efficient with bickering and the time it took for the targets to either right themselves or get replaced.

The night wasn’t going to end with just target practice, though. 

After Marco’s last blast of the night hit its mark, smoking, Marco winced and put his index finger to his ear, righting his posture and sighing.

“What’s the glare for?” asked Dante, a hint of the same snark Marco liked to give him in his voice. He didn’t like Marco’s attitude, but he didn’t think it would be too smart to mimic it. He’d have to wait a few months for that.

Marco huffed. “Sparring. Korse says he wants to see how you fight.”

“That seems - unfair…” Dante wasn’t going to argue about it, though. Maybe they were upset that he was as good a shot as Marco and wanted him to get his ass handed to him.

It seemed like sparring with Marco was a good way to do that, considering Dante had never gotten into a fight in his life - not when he had to go to the Lobby to get his mother her prescriptions, not when he was in school. Never, because he was a good kid and fighting was against City regulations.

“Well, I guess that’ll make it more fun for me.” The grin on Marco’s face was at Dante’s expense; he seemed more than happy to holster the ray gun and walk away from the targets, toward a rack on the wall that Dante hadn’t paid much attention to.

It was hard to pay attention to anything in the Tower when it was all varying shades of monochrome and, more often than not, blinding white. It made it difficult to look at. 

With that, Dante holstered his own blaster and watched as Marco pulled out four gauze wraps, tossing two at Dante with a beaming fake smile.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” So maybe Dante liked to irritate him. Marco had an ego about as tall as the Tower and it was starting to get on Dante’s nerves. 

Marco hummed, already wrapping his hands and… His feet? You were supposed to do that? Wait, how were you supposed to wrap them up? Was there a specific way to do that? “How’d you guess?”

“Whatever. You can get your kicks in later.” Dante only realized the pun after it left his mouth, scowling. “Can you help me get these wrapped up?”

There was something so intimately wrong about asking someone like Marco to keep him, and Dante had a funny feeling that it went beyond his pride.

Maybe he wasn’t jittery about sparring with Marco. Maybe it was something more than that. What could it be, though? Dante had grown up being told that the Crows were people to be celebrated and to become one of them was an honor.

Why did he hate them so much? And why did Marco hate him so much?

“You can fire at a target seven times in a row and hit dead-center each time, but you can’t wrap your hands?”

“You don’t have to sound so mocking about it.”

“You don’t need to be so contradictory,” Marco mumbled under his breath - Dante barely caught it. 

Nevertheless, the only sounds within the training room were their breathing; Dante was stock-still as Marco gently started wrapping his hands up in the gauze, a specific, rhythmic feeling to his actions.

There was a correct way to do it, huh. 

“So? How does one spar?” Dante never liked silence. It meant something was wrong. And everything about Marco and the Tower felt wrong to him in a way he couldn’t explain.

Marco’s laugh was biting and sharp, but too quiet to feel like glass, as he started to help Dante wrap up his feet, too. Maybe it was so that nothing got broken? That would make sense. “Really? Well, I guess there’s proper etiquette and things like that, but Korse says he doesn’t care about etiquette with you right now. We just… Fight, I guess. No weapons, this time, and it ends with one of us tapping out.”

“How do you tap out?”

“Hit the ground twice, or just shout surrender. I’m rather good at sparring.”

“Just like you’re the best in your class with a ray gun?” What? Dante deserved to get a jab or two in if they were going to have to take to each other so often. It was only fair, wasn’t it?

Marco shoved him, enough to make him stumble a few feet. “Watch your mouth, Uragano. You’re not a hot-shot just because you can pull a trigger.”

“Same logic applies to you, doesn’t it?” Dante was pushing Marco’s buttons, and he knew it. He didn’t know why he was, but he knew that he needed to keep doing it, though he felt bad about it. Especially since Marco had helped him out with the gauze.

Marco snarled at him, stalking to the corner of the gray mat on the floor. “Maybe it does. Wanna find out?”

“Not with that attitude I don’t,” Dante beamed, fake and for the sole purpose of irritating Marco further.

Then it clicked.

That’s why he was irritating Marco. If Marco got angry at him, he’d get impatient, sloppy. Marco was already bigger than him and better-trained, so Dante needed to find a way to throw  _ him  _ off.

It’d get them on even footing if Marco was being sloppy. Enough for Dante to find a way to get around their size difference, at least, he hoped.

“Whatever. C’mon, take your place. I want this over with,” Marco snapped. 

That helped - Marco wanting to get the spar over with, that is. It meant he’d rush if Dante hit just the right buttons. If he rushed, it would hopefully add to the sloppiness and anger just enough that Dante had a chance at winning the spar.

So, Dante took his place, the lower right corner of the square mat, mimicking Marco as he started to circle around the mat.

“Is that all this is?” Dante snorted. They could play ring-around-the-rosie with more intensity than this!

“Sizing your opponent up is important.” It was cool, collected. Like Marco was in his zone, like this was a battle and Dante was the enemy. 

Technically, that was true. And that meant that everything Dante had just done to piss him off went to waste. That wasn’t looking good for Dante… 

“Should I be taking notes?” Did banter help?

Dante didn’t think so, but it kept the situation more light-hearted. Dante had a feeling he wouldn’t like it if he accidentally got too-involved in this artificial fight, started treating it like a real one when it was designed to assess his skills, not test them.

Right?

The issue with bantering to avoid tricking himself into thinking it was something it was not, was that Marco did not offer any quippy one-liners back, which meant it was useless.

Even the lighting seemed to get darker, the sky twisting from light to dark as the hours ticked by. No lights on in the training room.

Marco didn’t train this long in this particular room, not usually. That was a given due to how much he didn’t seem to like the idea. Could Dante use that against him?

“Make a move, Campbell,” Dante huffed, faking the irritation in his tone. Did Marco know well enough to know that making him mad was an advantage? Or did Marco simply think he was better than Dante, that he didn’t  _ need  _ advantages like that?

The smirk quirking at the side of Marco’s lip told Dante what he needed to know. Marco wasn’t underestimating him, sizing him up like a trained opponent despite how Dante was anything but. That wasn’t good.

“Waiting for you~” Even Marco’s  _ sing-song  _ was calm. That wasn’t in-character at all! That wasn’t how this was supposed to go! 

Fuck, Dante had no choice. He didn’t have the time to figure out what he was doing and he knew he was going to lose anyway.

So why shouldn’t he rush Marco?

Sure, yeah, everything at him was screaming that it was a bad idea and he needed to  _ win,  _ but this was a  _ spar,  _ it wasn’t a real fight and Dante wanted to wash off all the sweat sticking his jumpsuit to his back.

Maybe rushing Marco would’ve turned out better if Marco didn’t step to the side and pivot, perfectly in time to kick Dante in the back of the knee and send him tumbling - 

No, no he was  _ not  _ tumbling forward! Dante tripped but caught himself before his face smashed into the ground and jumped up, a few feet away from Marco before Marco had the chance to take advantage of him being on the ground.

They weren’t going back to circling.

Dante’s pupils were blown, darting from here to there as he tried to figure out what Marco was doing, but Marco wasn’t doing anything. He was standing there, smiling at Dante with that stupid fake smile once again.

What the hell? They were  _ fighting,  _ wasn’t Marco the one who wanted to get it over with? 

Marco was going to start getting into his head if he kept thinking like that. Be patient.

Dante needed to take a step back, stop thinking  _ go go go  _ because that wasn’t what was happening. And if he continued like that, it’d be a sure victory for Marco, minimal effort required, and that was something Dante was determined to not let Marco have.

Marco was going to win, but Dante didn’t want it to be  _ easy.  _ “C’mon, Uragano, where’s that fire from earlier?”

“You’re not getting into my head.” Calm, collected. A mirrored version of Marco, blank enough to frustrate him, hopefully. 

It didn’t work. Why wasn’t it working? Destroya be damned!

Wait, what was a  _ Destroya? _

His confusion was costly, because Marco could see the moment that he let his guard down and he knew that was his chance - 

Marco wasn’t all too brutal in technique. He swung his foot into the back of Dante’s knee again, catching him as he started to fall forward and forcing his arms behind his back.

“That was too easy, Uragano,” Marco snickered, pinning Dante to the ground with a knee in his back and leaning forward to talk in his ear. 

Dante spat at the ground, trying to catch up with what was happening. “I - We’re not - I haven’t tapped out yet.”

“Yeah, and if you don’t we’ll be sitting here for an hour.”

“Will we?” 

Because that’s when Dante threw his head back, a  _ crack  _ coming from Marco’s nose -

With Marco off-balance, Dante was able to wrestle his wrists out of Marco’s grin, turning onto his back and wrapping his leg around Marco’s torso before he could pull any tricky shit. 

“Are you  _ sure  _ we’ll be sitting here for an hour?” Dante repeated, smirking.

Marco seemed genuinely confused, and it showed beyond the tears in his eyes and the swell already starting to form around his crooked nose.

Marco wasn’t used to being beaten, at anything, and especially not by someone like Dante, was he?

Dante wasn’t used to… to any of this. 

Dante wasn’t supposed to be able to fight - he’d never been in a fight in his life, but the fighting had been Marco’s  _ entire  _ life.

He wasn’t supposed to know how to fire a ray gun, but he knew that Marco’s posture was off and he knew how to hit a bullseye four times in a row. 

What the hell was going on?

_

Maybe the only good thing about being at the Crow Program was that he didn’t have to deal with his mother’s hair in the shower because she never cleaned the drains and Dante got a bit sick and tired of it.

He didn’t get his own shower, of course, though he’d been told that higher-level students and operatives got special accommodations because of their title - a personal bathroom, a room bigger than a shoebox, stuff like that.

Dante didn’t mind. The shampoo and conditioner he got were unlabelled, but there was so much relief in brushing it through his hair, the repetitive motion, and the soap running down his back calming and soothing in a way he couldn’t place.

Despite the shower not being his own, he was the only one there. Everyone else was already in bed, or so he assumed.

It gave him enough time to look over his day and… Look over himself. There were a lot of things relating to his accident he couldn’t place, but they… He didn’t know, they didn’t feel right.

His arms were covered in scars. Nothing grotesque, nothing too bad, but it was all from the two-inch stitched-scar in his elbow, two inches long, or the nick in his forearm. There were no scars on his hands, and a scar on his wrist got abruptly cut off.

Dante was glad that the fog of the shower fogged up the mirror. He knew that, when he looked in the mirror, he’d see himself, but  _ missing  _ something. Like his face was meant to be scarred, like he was missing something that had defined him for so long.

But that was dumb. That was dumb because you couldn’t just get rid of scars like that, and even if he did get all of his scars from his accident, his mother would’ve told him, right?

His mother would’ve told him if he wasn’t who he thought he was, right?

Who was he? 

“Dante Uragano,” Dante murmured to himself, leaning up against the tiled wall, droplets running down from his hair and into his eyes. He didn’t bother wiping it away.

What did he know?

“Dante Uragano,” he swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut and losing the comfort he’d felt from the water running down his back, a mocking taunt of fluidity. “Son of - of - Maria Uragano and Jason Uragano. Fif - no, no, sixteen-years-old. Blue eyes and black - er, blond hair.”

Those were just the things he could see in the mirror or the things he’d known all his life. Why was he getting tripped up?

It was because he was psyching himself up to get the answers  _ wrong,  _ wasn’t it? He wasn’t anything special, and it was dangerous to start thinking he was, wasn’t it? 

He was another citizen of Battery City, even if he was one with the spectacular aim and good battle tactics. He was just another citizen, born and raised with his parents and in the Boron District. Just another citizen.

Why did he  _ feel  _ so alien, then?

Was it because he didn’t  _ want  _ to be average? Was it because he wanted to be like Marco, top marks in everything, and too proud of himself to even  _ consider  _ that he was being lied to? Was it because he was tired of being like everyone else?

And, most important of all… Did he really need to be having a breakdown in the shower?

Yeah, yeah, no, he didn’t. What he  _ needed  _ was to finish washing his hair and scrubbing all the sweat off of his body, go back to the lobby, and ask what was going to be happening with his meds. 

He was betting he hadn’t taken them - Marco and he had sparred for at least an hour, well past when he usually went to bed. If he was already having a breakdown, then he really, really needed to make sure that he wasn’t being taken off his meds. 

Alright. Time to pull himself together, right? That’s what he needed to do, right?

Pull himself up, up from leaning against the wall, get all the soap off his body and out of his hair, and then go to the lobby. Right, it was just that easy. It’d be fine, right? 

It was not fine. It was not that easy.

There was something so intimately  _ wrong  _ about the day, about his breakdown, about spending all that time  _ with  _ Marco and not  _ against  _ him and Dante  _ couldn’t figure out why _ .

He knew in his heart that he wasn’t where he belonged. He knew, somewhere, that he wasn’t meant to be a Crow and there was a reason behind why he didn’t want to be, even if he couldn’t place it.

He’d said yes, though, and this was his price to pay for it, wasn’t it? 

_

“Marco? You up?” 

Marco groaned, rolling over and expecting to find the warm embrace of his pillow, and - 

Ow!

“Mother -” Marco swore, throwing his hands toward his forehead in an attempt to soothe what he already knew was going to be a red welt. Great! Just what he needed at… the clock was blurry, but Marco was pretty damn sure that it read four-forty-five in the morning and he wasn't there for that. "Who's at the door?"

"It's Uragano."

Oh. Well, that wasn't a good reason to get up, no matter what Dante wanted. Dante was the reason that his muscles were so sore, anyway. 

He wasn't even sure if he hated that or not. It was nice to have a good challenge, something to work toward, and something to strive for. Marco simply wished it hadn't come in the form of Dante Uragano.

Ignoring his inner turmoil, Marco stumbled out of bed, still holding his forehead and sneering as he opened the door. "It's not time for trainin' yet. What do you want?"

Dante beamed at him, in regulation uniform and way, way too awake for Marco's liking. What? A Crow-in-training didn't have to like being up so early all the time! "I was wondering if you wanted to get in an early training session?"

"Why are you so cheerful all of a sudden?" Ugh, he needed to shut up. Was Marco asking why someone was happy? His entire job was making sure that people stayed happy, wasn't it? 

"I've been up for hours, it's hard not to be!"

Okay... That was odd, from what Marco knew about Dante. Maybe he was having an off day? Drank too much coffee? Took too many meds? Whatever. It wasn't Marco's job to look after him. 

It was Marco's job to make sure he didn't get into anything he wasn't supposed to, or got too curious about anything. He sighed. "Sure, just - let me get dressed and take a shower and stuff."

"Do you want me to wait out here, or in your room?" Oh, there was a little bit of the Dante that Marco had seen yesterday. That heavily implied that Dante was simply faking the whole happy thing to confuse Marco and, in his sleepy state, it worked. Interesting.

He needed to learn how to become more vigilant at a moment's notice. Maybe Korse told Dante to test Marco, something like that. It happened with the last trainee. 

"You can, I guess - I guess you can wait in here?" Marco wasn't all too high up when it came to his status as a Crow. For a student, it was rather impressive, but it was just a rather large room with a bathroom.

It had a kitchenette, though! The tile was hideous and Marco was certain that the last time it was updated was before he was born, but it was something, and it was something Marco had worked hard for. "Get a bowl of cereal or something. And don't touch anything."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're less snappy in the mornings?" Dante snorted, absolutely the same Dante that Marco had seen the other day. 

"No. And they won't start." God, Dante had a way of getting on his nerves.

It was... unusual, the types of things that Dante said, asked, or even did.

Marco had read Dante's file before he went to bed. It might've even been the source of the dream he had that he couldn't remember, because it was certainly... something. For once, it'd manually be about an inch-and-a-half thick - Marco had done the math.

And, even more curious, it was almost all behind a firewall that he didn't even want to attempt hacking. A big, red, 'CLASSIFiED' greeted him every time he tried to click on a link. It was like Dante had been the source of misconduct within the city and then suddenly went on the straight and narrow, while the accessible information dated back to only weeks ago. What was that all about?

Marco might start being nice to Dante. Maybe it would do him good - give him experience in the field of... whatever was going on with Dante.

That, and it would earn Dante's trust.

Better Living Industries frowned upon manipulation and absence of truth, but Korse always told Marco that it was more important to get the job done than it was to make sure that he followed procedure. And technically, there was no procedure for a person of interest like Dante.

The job? First, take a fucking shower, because it wasn't even five in the morning, and the second, figure out what was going on in the life of Dante Uragano. Oh! Maybe get some breakfast while he was at it, that would be nice too. 

Grabbing his clothes for the day, - the same jumpsuit he wore every day, though it had a more dramatic collar and his last name was nowhere to be seen - as well as a towel, Marco decided to contemplate how he was going to go about his plan in the shower.

_

"You have, like... Nothing in the cupboard." 

Marco rolled his eyes, zipping his jumpsuit up to his neck. "Oh, really? You wouldn't say? I didn't know we were calling cereal and bagels 'nothing' now!"

"Would you quit with the sarcasm?" Dante stuck his tongue out at Marco - what a petulant child! "I didn't see them!"

"So you... didn't do anything while I was in the shower?"

Dante shrugged, hopping down from the kitchen counter. Ugh, Marco would have to disinfect that later to make sure it passed inspections later. "Not much. Went through your fridge and your cupboards-"

"Not very well."

"- Shut up. Anyway, why were you looking at my file?"

What? Dante wasn't supposed to see that! Shit, shit, did he know what Marco was planning? Did he know and not care? Did it matter? God, Marco hoped that it didn't matter. Something like that would fly with Korse, but from what he didn't know about Dante, Dante was a wild-card and a dangerous one at that.

Anyone Better than him was a threat.

"Why were you going through my laptop? You wouldn't have seen that without violating at least one of the Tower's rules." Marco knew that he wouldn't technically get Dante into trouble for going through his laptop if Dante said that he'd assumed Marco was hiding something, but Dante probably didn't. 

And Marco knew he'd hit the nail on the target when Dante went red in the face, clearly trying to scramble for an answer, but his fluid tone was one of practiced manipulation. What was up with this kid? "It was by your bed. I figured I'd see what was good for a late-night read. You don't fall asleep easily, do you?"

Hey, why was Dante turning the conversation around on him? He didn't like that! It was worse considering that he was right, and Marco opted to rustle around for the cereal instead of answering.

It was in the cupboard next to the sink, on the complete opposite side of the kitchen as the bowls. Marco could not remember for the love of God why he'd put it there, but then again, he didn't remember anything too well. 

"Bland cereal or slightly less bland cereal?" There was a large difference between what he could buy at the grocery store and what he got provided with. If Marco ever had to eat oatmeal made with too much water and then jammed full of rotten peaches, he was sure it would taste exactly like his breakfast.

Unfortunately, a student's salary wasn't exactly the easiest to live off of. 

"Off-topic or completely off-topic?" Dante mocked, sitting down at one of Marco's two kitchen chairs and tapping his fingers rhythmically on the counter.

Marco hated the sound, but he was more caught on Dante's words. What was that supposed to mean? "We don't have a topic to go off of, regardless, Uragano."

"We do," Dante said pointedly, leaning forward to emphasize his point. Great, he was going to keep doing that. Marco hated feeling like he was being talked down to. "I came here for a sparring match, yeah? You haven't even brought up what the semantics of that are gonna be." 

"Going to, enunciate your words. We're not in high school anymore." FIne, if Dante was going to be condescending, then so was Marco. Dante was new, he wasn't special, he wasn't anything better than Marco! "Semantics can be worked out as we go. I figured you'd like to take up that offer of breakfast considering you violated my privacy like you did."

It was Dante's turn to roll his eyes. "C'mon! I was just trying to find the cereal! You don't get to call that a violation of your privacy!"

"I get to call it whatever I want." That was one benefit of being the top student, the Crow with potential that no other candidate had ever reached. "Who do you think would be believed if I reported it to our supervisors? You?" 

Dante was silent for a minute or two, glowering at Marco in the same way you'd glower at a spider in the corner. Because Dante still thought, somewhere, that he was better than Marco. "Get off your high horse. I came in for a sparring session, not to get reported for looking for some cereal."

"I know. Just making sure you get the gist of how things work here, yeah?:" No, he wasn't. He was figuring out how Dante reacted to things - find a way that, when executed right, would put Dante over the top. So far he was being too collected for Marco's liking, but it meant that Dante didn't have a fear of BLI. 

If Dante had been afraid of BLI, then he would've started sweating under the threat of Marco turning him in, even for something mediocre. Even if Dante was a practiced liar, which Marco knew to be true from the few interactions they'd had, something would give him away. 

God fucking dammit. Marco should be asleep, not contemplating every action of a grimy little amateur from the slums. 

_

While Marco appreciated a challenge, especially when it came to sparring, he did not appreciate a challenge at five in the morning and, without his coffee, he was about to play dead and hope Dante took it as tapping out.

There was something about the early morning that made hitting your spine on a thin mat hurt more than usual. Maybe the extra pain was from his pride, but oh fucking well. 

“Do you ever give up?” Dante scoffed, pinning Marco’s arm behind him. 

Did Marco ever give up? Only on the outside. Well, actually, that was a lie, but it made him feel better about himself and that’s what he was all about - being Better. 

Marco spat at the ground, a defiance in it’s own right. “Do you ever stop to think?”

Maybe his question wasn’t finished, or maybe he was just tired of being on the ground, because Marco took advantage of Dante’s slight confusion to kick his leg up, hitting Dante in the back and throwing him off just enough for Marco to roll them both over and reverse the situation - Dante with one of his arms pinned behind his back, and one shoved between his chest and the floor. 

The groan that fell from Dante’s lips was one of defeat, and Marco felt oddly proud of himself. “You know, if we were really fighting, I would’ve killed you by now?”

“You say it like it’s an accomplishment,” said Dante, signalling that he was tapping out and that Marco needed to get off of him. “Taking life isn’t an accomplishment.”

“It is when it’s threatening other people. By that logic, wouldn’t killing a parasite be considered morally  _ wrong? _ ”

“Yeah, I’m sure comparing humans to parasites is a good idea. And I think that’s the last round we’ll have today, isn’t it time for class?”

Oh, so Dante wanted to change the subject now? Interesting. Most of the people Marco spoke morality with either begrudgingly agreed with him or argued with him until he walked away. But Dante dropped the subject entirely. 

At the very least, Dante was right. It was time for class - nothing with Korse, nothing physical for the day.

_

See, Marco was good at sparring - he was good at sparring and he was good with a ray gun, and he was good with statistics. 

He wasn’t good with probability.

He didn’t know what it was about them, but he was horrible at probability, especially when he needed to think fast. It was easier to guess; he was almost right when he guessed, but he was expected to be able to explain why he’d come to the conclusion he’d come to. 

Marco couldn’t  _ do that! _

Top student, yeah, sure. So long as he wasn’t doing probability.

Maybe he could understand why it was important to be able to calculate the outcome of a situation in seconds - when he graduated he’d have a squad assigned to him and he’d be responsible for their lives, but he didn’t  _ need  _ to calculate anything.

He’d know if something was going to go wrong. He  _ always  _ knew, whether it be the work of divinity or quick reflexes. 

“What are we supposed to be doing?”

Dante didn’t mean to, but he got spit on the side of Marco’s mouth, and Marco was about to throw a tantrum. Not only did he still have to do probability for something he’d  _ never need,  _ but he had Dante with him! It was impossible!

“Answering the questions on your worksheet,” Marco snapped, looking up only to effectively wipe the spit off with the back of his sleeve. 

Stupid worksheet. The only question answered was the slot at the top that read  **NAME.** Marco was… going to be in trouble, to put it lightly.

Ten more minutes to answer forty-seven questions, none of which he knew the slightest answer to. And if he failed, which he was going to, he’d have to take the course over again, and he wouldn’t graduate on schedule! 

Was his lack of common rationale going to trap him in this classroom for another year? Marco was starting to think so. 

They would take away his suite, too. And his dumb little kitchenette. And his stupid sink cereal! 

“Do you need help?”

Why the Hell does Dante sound vaguely…  _ concerned?  _ Marco didn’t need help! He was already going to fail, he didn’t need Dante rubbing salt into the wound. “No. Look at your own paper, yeah?”

“No,” Dante smiled at him, helpful and positive and Marco  _ hated it.  _ He couldn’t even fail in peace with Dante around, could he? “D’ya know sign language?”

What kind of question was that? “Of course I do,” Marco whispered, appalled at the idea that  _ Dante  _ would know that and  _ he  _ wouldn’t. Dante wasn’t Better than him. He never would be. “What do they have to do with this stupid quiz?”

“It’s rather simple -”

“Is there anything you’d like to share, Mr. Uragano?” 

Marco swore under his breath once again, turning toward the front of the room and the android programmed to be their teacher. “Miss, Dante was simply asking about the next class in our schedule. He’s new.”

The droid seemingly processed this for a moment, before smiling artificially at the two of them. There was a cold warning in her voice. “This is okay. Remember, boys, this is your  _ final.  _ To be caught cheating would be to show all of Battery City you haven’t learned to be  _ Better.” _

“And we should know  _ Better  _ by now,” Marco murmured under his breath, finishing the phrase he’d heard for years and years until they stopped repeating it, likely knowing that the students themselves would remember it echoing through their heads and correct their own behavior. 

When Marco looked toward Dante again, he was wagging his brows with a hidden mischievous grin, holding up the universal sign for  _ one,  _ sign language or not. 

Confused, Marco watched, until Dante switched to holding a letter  _ C  _ against his leg. 

Then Marco got the gist of what Dante was doing.

Dante was helping him  _ cheat on his final exam.  _

Normally, Marco wouldn’t condone cheating, just as he would’ve corrected Dante’s lack of proper enunciation earlier, but… Dante was his only shot to pass his exam. 

It was either cheat, pass, never speak of it again, versus listen to his moral values, not cheat, fail, get stuck in probability for another year, graduate late, versus cheat, get caught, get stuck in probability for another year, graduate late, etc. 

Whatever. Whatever, he was going to pass!

“You better know what you’re talking about,” Marco hissed to him, akin to the same warning a snake gave as he subtly redirected his gaze toward his paper and circled in the bubble answers, seeing Dante’s signs in his peripheral vision.

By the time ten minutes was up, Marco was hastily bubbling in answer forty-seven. 

_

“Uh… thanks for the quiz,” Marco nodded, two hours after the exam had ended and he and Dante were sitting across from each other within the cafeteria.

Usually, Marco would be spending this time in the break-room, where the higher-ranking Crows and Exterminators ate, because he hated his peers and he severely disliked how loud the cafeteria was on the best of days, but he was stuck with Dante for another two weeks.

Dante nodded, a piece of lettuce stuck between his teeth. Marco wasn’t going to point it out. “No problem. That was the final, right?”

“Obviously.” Oh, there was Dante’s personality making an appearance again, asking questions with obvious answers. Marco rather preferred when he didn’t. “If you were paying attention when you were scolded.”

“Just asking. Besides, does it matter for me, personally? I’ve never been in that class before and like… yeah.” 

Great, there were the questions that Marco  _ didn’t  _ know the answer to. Why was Dante so curious about everything? There were some areas that they didn’t need to know about. “I don’t know. Take it up with the droid if you’re interested.”

Dante sighed into his sandwich, and Marco was too frustrated with both himself and Dante to have the heart to tell him there was mayonnaise on his shirt.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!!! thoughts??

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Thoughts?


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